Neighbours long had doubts about Taiwan complex

Tainan, Taiwan

LONG before a 17-story condominium complex was ever built across the street from his family home in the early 1990s, Yang Yumin used to play on the site as a boy.

It was a large rice field then, with a canal down one side, a stream that had been straightened and channelled in his grandparents' day. The field was flooded and soggy when the rice was growing. But after each harvest it would dry, and Mr Yang and his friends would fly kites and kick footballs there.