Beginning in 1981 when it opened its doors in the Chinese city of Wuxi in Jiangsu province, the Big Paddy’s Edge Inn attracted some of the city’s most colorful characters. The inn’s proprietor, Gu Qimei, charged a rock-bottom nightly fee of 6 RMB—or less than U.S.$1—to her residents, who shared daily necessities like food and cooking fuel. In 2009, Jiang Rongfa began photographing the hotel and interviewing many of its residents. Last year, after 33 years of operation, the hotel was forced to close when Wuxi demolished it to clear the way for new development.

The city of Wuxi is located on the shores of Lake Tai in Jiangsu province, in a region long known as the breadbasket of China. Today the city has a booming economy, with a per capita GDP of 124,000 RMB in 2013. Quanchang Road, in the Beitang district, was once a flourishing commercial thoroughfare. For more than three decades, it was also home to the Big Paddy’s Edge Inn, a hotel that charged its guests the low fee of only 95 cents a night.

Thanks to its bargain prices, the Paddy’s Edge drew an eclectic crowd. Its residents, some of whom stayed for more than 20 years, included peddlers of combs, belts, blankets, flower seedlings, balloons, fermented bean curd, rattles, roast sweet potatoes, and rat poison; a buyer of used cell phones; a tricycle deliveryman; a man who repaired bikes; disabled people who sang or begged for a living; a nurse’s aid and a hotel handyman; a few con men; and street performers who made sculptures out of dough and blew figurines from spun sugar. Not only was the price impossible to beat, but in the convivial atmosphere many guests came to see the Paddy’s Edge as home. On holidays, they held potluck dinners or the proprietress Ms. Gu treated the entire hotel to a free meal. The tenants seldom argued or fought.

Facilities were crude. Eight rooms contained a total of 38 beds, and four of the rooms slept six apiece on steel-framed bunk beds. There were also several doubles. The interior was spartan, with hard wooden beds, old-fashioned square tables, a communal bathroom, and a single black-and-white television in one room. In order to cut costs, all the lights used energy-saving bulbs, and during the summer the tenants used only electric fans for fear of burning out the hotel’s ancient wiring. In the courtyard there was a well, and near the door stood a collection of jars and basins in which the residents washed their clothing. To keep the water bill down, tap water was used only for cooking. The management provided free cooking implements and fuel for communal use; in the alleyway behind the hotel sat four coal stoves, fed with cheap coal briquettes, on which the tenants prepared meals and boiled water.

Before the Communists came to power in 1949, the land the Paddy’s Edge occupied was home to a row of one-story buildings where a coffin maker sold cheap wooden caskets. In 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the coffin maker fled to Hong Kong and ownership of the building was transferred to the Big Paddy’s Edge Neighborhood Committee of Wuqiao Street. In 1981, the district housing authority and Wuqiao neighborhood committee jointly put up funds to renovate the property, replacing it with a small two-story, three-room-wide building that the neighborhood committee then began operating as an inn. At the time, the nightly rate was just 8 mao, less than 1 Yuan or 47 cents (adjusted to a 1981 exchange rate). The new hotel did brisk business and was often at capacity. Sometimes the management even had to add extra beds.

The hotel owner, Gu Qimei, used to work at a nearby hostel. In 2000, when she retired at the age of 50, she bought the Paddy’s Edge and began to manage it. When she bought it the nightly rate was 5 RMB. The hotel was already providing guests with stoves and cooking implements free of charge so that they could prepare their own meals. In 2010, after consulting with the long-term residents, Ms. Gu raised the nightly rate to 6 RMB.

Eventually the district where Paddy’s Edge was located was marked for demolition. In April 2014, a police officer delivered the notice that the hotel must cease operating because it was going to be demolished to make way for new development and construction. The tenants were forced to pack their bags and vacate. A week later, while Ms. Gu was in the hospital receiving treatment for the flu, several dozen demolition workers and police officers arrived and began to tear the inn down.