VISUAL RECORDS: Cao Guobin shows on January 22 the pictures he took in the process of shantytown renovation of Beiliang Community in Baotou, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (LIAN ZHEN)

Cao Guobin, an official working on the shantytown renovation in Beiliang Community in Baotou, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has recorded the whole renovation process in the piles of pictures he took over the past two years as an amateur photographer.

Beiliang Community in Baotou is home to about 120,000 people and was the largest shantytown area in China. Many residents have been living there for decades, and in some domiciles, several generations were forced to share just one room.

In early 2013, Premier Li Keqiang visited the area and promised to "work hard to promote slum renovation."

Since then, more than 2,000 local civil servants have been assigned to work together on this project and by January 2015, all residents of Beiliang had been moved to new houses, 18 months earlier than originally scheduled.

New homes

Shantytown renovation in urban areas is a major component of Premier Li's new urbanization plan. Li once commented on the phenomenon in cities where shiny, modern skyscrapers dominate one side of the city while sprawling and dilapidated shanties rule the other. "This sharp contrast is indicative of unhealthy urbanization," said Li, who pledged that his administration would lift more than 10 million families out of urban shantytowns as a way of solving the problem and lowering the threshold for urbanization.

The plan is a central part of the country's efforts to provide low-income urban residents with affordable housing.

"But it is a hard nut to crack," said Cao, who said he met with hostility at many households at the very beginning. "There were many misunderstandings between the government working staff and residents in shantytown areas."

HAPPY NEW YEAR: A resident in Dongguan Community of Ning'an, Heilongjiang Province, pastes the Chinese character fu, meaning fortune and happiness, on the wall of her new house for the Spring Festival this year on February 11 (ZHANG CHUNXIANG)

According to Cao, some shantytown residents thought the government workers in charge of the renovation project would receive money by persuading them to move out and the real estate company involved in this project would be able to make a fortune by rebuilding modern apartments after moving them away. However, this was a false assumption. The land on which Beiliang is located is not suitable for high-rise buildings.

Many residents in shantytown areas took the opportunity to make exorbitant requests to the government. "A three-member family would ask for two apartments, this is not realistic," said Cao.

After months of negotiations, the situation began to thaw out. "Everybody that had been living in these conditions was very eager to move and we were just there to help them," said Cao.

Hou Shulin was among the first group to move out of the slum. On June 15, 2013, Hou got the keys to her low-rent house, which covers an area of 50 square meters. Before that, She had been living in a 21-square-meter flat house for decades with her family.

In Beiliang, 90 percent of the flat houses were over 50 years old and dilapidated. Hao Erjun had lived in a 36-square-meter house with her husband, child and mother-in-law before the renovation. The small house was divided into two rooms.