According to reports (by reporter Zeng Xiangrong, with correspondents Yang Mingwei and Su Kefeng) - Ye Furen, a 60-year-old man, signed a 30-year contract to lease a piece of mountainous land in Dinghu's Sanxinggang area. However, before the lease expired, the land was subleased to others. Despite Ye's numerous appeals yielding no results, he was forced to take legal action, filing a lawsuit against the Shantian Community Committee of the Gui Cheng Subdistrict Office in Dinghu District, Zhaoqing City.
Recently, the Dinghu District Court of Zhaoqing City held a hearing on the land lease contract dispute case between Ye Furen and the Shantian Community Committee.
**Ye Furen: This is bandit behavior**
"Without consultation, they arbitrarily subleased the orchard to others; this is simply bandit behavior." Outside the Dinghu District Court, Ye Furen, nearing his sixties, held up a yellowed copy of the mountainous land lease contract and said emotionally.
On February 18, 1985, the Shantian Community Committee leased the Sanxinggang mountainous land to Ye Furen, signing a contract with a 30-year term, ending on December 31, 2018. The annual rent was 100 yuan, with the first three years being fallow periods exempt from rent.
"At that time, it was barren land, and no one wanted it. I worked hard to reclaim it and plant fruit trees," said Ye Furen, who is short and wiry. "When the mountainous land finally bore fruit from the planted fruit trees, the orchard's trees and houses were taken over by others."
After signing the contract, Ye Furen planted more than 600 fruit trees, including sugar oranges, lychees, longans, huangpi, Satsuma mandarins, and guavas, and built an 80-square-meter brick-and-tile house. Ye Furen said that until the orchard was fenced off with iron bars in 2007, he had been managing it himself. Afterward, due to the fencing, Ye Furen returned to his hometown in Gaoyao, making a living selling charcoal.
**Shantian Community Committee: Abandoned cultivation**
In 1998, the community committee signed a 13-year contract with Mr. Su, subleasing the land for an annual rent of 1500 yuan. Later, the land changed hands several times and was leased by Mr. Chen in 2005, who signed a 38-year contract with the community committee, paying rent in seven installments, with a total rent of 154,600 yuan, which is 51 times what Ye Furen paid when he signed the contract in 1985.
The agent of the Shantian Community Committee stated that since 1998, the land had already been subleased to others, but the lawsuit was only filed now, clearly exceeding the statute of limitations. Moreover, after Ye Furen paid the rent for the years 1989 to 1991 in 1992, he never paid rent again. They believed that Ye Furen had abandoned cultivation and left the land fallow.
The community committee also claimed that in 1993, they sent someone to collect rent from Ye Furen but could not find him.
However, Ye Furen argued that because the community committee leased the nearby mountainous land to a boss who opened a quarry, severely damaging his fruit trees and house, he negotiated with the committee. If they agreed to pay him 40,000 yuan as compensation for breach of contract, he would voluntarily transfer the land. However, the committee did not agree.
The dispute over the quarry continued until 2007, when the new lessee of the land fenced off the orchard. Only then did Ye Furen realize that his fruit trees and house had been occupied by others. According to Ye Furen, from 1993 to 2007, he repeatedly tried to pay rent to relevant personnel at the Shantian Community Committee, but they refused to accept it.
**Lawyer: The fact of abandoning cultivation does not hold**
During this trial, since the Shantian Community Committee refused to settle, the court did not make a final judgment. The judge indicated that a reasonable verdict would be given as soon as possible according to legal procedures. Lawyer Han Weihua from Guangdong Duanqing Law Firm believed that based on relevant evidence, the defendant's claim that Ye Furen abandoned cultivation and left the land fallow does not hold. As for the final judgment, it still awaits further adjudication by the court.