"Look at my house, what an awful lots of cracks," Gao complained to a Xinhua reporter about the building that he had moved in right before the all-important Spring Festival early this year.

In all, there have been 350 families resettled at the government-planned welfare houses at Gao's village and another nearby, for which each household paid 70,000 yuan (US$10,514) to foot the 100,000 yuan construction bill.

At first blush, it seemed like a windfall boon for Gao, since residents at other villages in Yao'an had all but to build the houses themselves. But soon Gao found that the handed-out 350 houses at their villages are problematic, if not disastrous.

According to a quality report submitted to local government in September, cracks are rifle on the two villages' buildings that water could easily leak into the floor below. Some of the outer walls are not upright enough and the interior plaster just puckers up like burst blisters.

More appalling, residents at the ground floor found their homes are gradually sinking, apparently due to slack foundation. The ceilings are no better. Small changes indicate they keep subsiding in the center, making the upper floor virtually a giant flat bowl that, at least at one villager's home, it could hold a puddle one centimeter deep.

The project was so poor that while in the making, five houses had to be pulled down clumsily and rebuilt. Then half a year after villagers' moving in, another six were bulldozed to build them all over again.

Nearly seventeen months after a powerful earthquake leveled the Yao'an county in Southwest China's Yunnan province, Gao Xuefu still quiver at his new welfare house, not at all for fear of the long-gone aftershocks. What concern him are the widening cracks creeping everywhere, from floor to ceiling.

"Look at my house, what an awful lots of cracks," Gao complained to a Xinhua reporter about the building that he had moved in right before the all-important Spring Festival early this year.

In all, there have been 350 families resettled at the government-planned welfare houses at Gao's village and another nearby, for which each household paid 70,000 yuan (US$10,514) to foot the 100,000 yuan construction bill.

At first blush, it seemed like a windfall boon for Gao, since residents at other villages in Yao'an had all but to build the houses themselves. But soon Gao found that the handed-out 350 houses at their villages are problematic, if not disastrous.

According to a quality report submitted to local government in September, cracks are rifle on the two villages' buildings that water could easily leak into the floor below. Some of the outer walls are not upright enough and the interior plaster just puckers up like burst blisters.

More appalling, residents at the ground floor found their homes are gradually sinking, apparently due to slack foundation. The ceilings are no better. Small changes indicate they keep subsiding in the center, making the upper floor virtually a giant flat bowl that, at least at one villager's home, it could hold a puddle one centimeter deep.

The project was so poor that while in the making, five houses had to be pulled down clumsily and rebuilt. Then half a year after villagers' moving in, another six were bulldozed to build them all over again.

(chinadaily.com.cn December 18, 2010)