BEIJING -- Watching the workers busy unloading the furniture from the truck and moving into her house, the 60-year-old Yang Li smiled in content.

"My biggest wish has been fulfilled," said the bespectacled old lady while examining her refurbished bungalow.

The courtyard of Dongsi Sitiao No. 59 in Beijing's Dongcheng District was built in the Qing Dynasty, in which Yang has lived for nearly half a century.

Last overhaul of the house Yang could remember was in 1978 after the appalling Tangshan earthquake that killed some 240,000 people in north China and ruined an entire city near Beijing.

As time passes by, the house became too shabby to live in. "When it poured outside, there was shower inside," she recalled, "and we have to call the housing management office at midnight."

Use of water and electricity posed another problem. In Yang's courtyard there lived five households, all of whom shared one electricity meter and one water meter. "Disputes occurred whenever we pay electricity and water fees, as it was hard to decide the proportion," she said.

Her troubles were echoed by 56-year-old Chen Yuying from Fusuijing No. 56 of Xicheng District. "The old name of this area a century ago was a good reflection of our life: bit

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