AN elderly couple in China have found themselves living in the middle of a new main road, after they refused to let their home be demolished.

Duck farmer Luo Baogen and his wife were the lone holdouts from a neighbourhood of once-connected homes that was cleared to make way for the thoroughfare which heads to a newly built railway station.

Mr Baogen said the compensation he and his wife were offered by authorities for the destruction of his home was not enough, and he refused to sign the property over.

But that failed to stop the building of the road in Wenling City in east China's Zhejiang province, which has simply been constructed around the five-storey property.

Homeowners in China who refuse to make way for redevelopment projects are known as ‘Nail Householders’ – a nail which is stuck in an old piece of wood and can not be prised out with a hammer.

The couple may have second thoughts about staying in their home though, when the road finally opens and traffic begins roaring past.