Living in the slow lane: China accidentally builds flats in path of new highway... then has to cut road in HALF

Town planning disaster: Chinese officials were forced to cut this motorway in half to go around a block of flats after the building was accidentally erected in its path before the road was built

Construction crisis: The council found it would be much cheaper just to reduce the number of lanes on the road than try to compensate the residents in the flats for having to move them

Resident Shing Su, who lives in the block in Xi’an, Shaanxi province in western China, said: 'We all lived in another area where they were building the Daming National Heritage Park and they promised to put us up in a new, modern block of flats, so we ended up here.

'But we had only been here a few months when they found that they had built one block too many, and that it was on the place where there was supposed to be a new highway.'

The council then started negotiations with the tenants, but with their new, modern flats they wanted even more compensation, and after several months of failed negotiations, the council simply gave up and built around the problem.

But the road has been branded a waste of time and money as it has done little to solve the problem of rush-hour congestion that it was designed to solve.

Fuming: Residents in the block say they are less than impressed with having to live in the middle of a road

Not again: The residents had already been moved from their previous homes to make way for a park. The road has been branded a waste of money because it has not relieved congestion in the city

Mr Shing added: 'We don't exactly like being stuck out in the middle of a 60metre-wide highway, but you get used to it.

'If they make a decent offer most would move, but it's hard as it seems we had only settled here when we were asked to move.'

It is not the first time a blunder or a dispute has led to bizarre construction projects in China. 

In December, an ancestral grave was left standing in the middle of a building site because the family of the deceased refuse to let it be moved.

The single gravestone was left on top of a ten metre high mound while workers erected a high-end block of flats around it in Taiyuan, capital of northern China's Shanxi Province.

Tomb with a view: In December, an ancestral grave was left standing in the middle of a building site because the family of the deceased refuse to let it be moved

The tomb is the ancestral grave of a villager from nearby Longbao whose family is unhappy with the level of relocation compensation that has been offered.

Last year, Chinese workers famously had to build a motorway around a single house when the owners refused to relocate.

Luo Baogen and his wife insisted on living in the half-demolished building in the city of Wenling, in Zhejiang province, because they believe that the compensation offered by the government to move was not enough.

However, the house was finally pulled down after the couple reportedly accepted an increased offer of compensation from £22,000 to £26,000.

Meanwhile. a furious family took legal action against property developers in Mianyang, south west China, last year after they demolished every staircase in their seven-storey apartment block in a bizarre bid to make them vacate their top-floor flat so they could build a factory.