未遂的好生意（怀古）

Since folks are talking about BJ RE, I was reminded of this story.

More than 30 years ago, my family was thinking to buy a private property in the city. One day my father's former comrade, who was the head of the BJ People's Bank at the time, took us there in his Toyota. It was a old style estate with a dozen or so rooms (si he yuan) with brick yard. The rooms were not in very good shape but livable. It was owned by an old booked family. The asking price was

RMB1000 per room.

Now, think about the location: a short walk from the Foreign Ministry (the old address, not the current one at the corner), this place would worth more than RMB 1M just for the dirt these days(did I miss a zero or two?).

We didn't buy it not because we did not have the money. The landlady said since the Culture Revolution, good part of the properties was taken by various "wu chang jie ji" families. It would be a horrible task try to evict them( that's probably the reason they wanted to sell; I assumed that they just got this property returned from CCCP after having been confiscated during the Culture Revolution). And the city fang guan ju had been pressing them to pay up repair bills for all these years.

I also had a friend whose grandpa used to own a water front property on Shi Sha Hai, not far from the Army Dance Troupe. One day we were having a drink in a bar nearby, He could point to the rough location from a window upstairs. That's all he could do, used to belong to his family.

When a revolution happens, it clears plate for those who owns.