Change is good. As I
sit typing this first blog post of the month, I've got my window open and the
air con off. Yes. It's 21 degrees Celsius (that's about 70 for
my American readers) and overcast (yīntiān). The humidity stands at a soggy 88%, and
there's a 30% chance of rain. It feels
awesome to get some fresh air without melting.
Even though today is Friday, I thought I'd share something I
saw last Sunday as I looked out my window after work. I've mentioned the lack (to put it mildly) of
safety here in China in previous posts, and if you've read any of my other
writing, you know that I sometimes cock a critical eye at construction
practices I find less than efficient. In
my genes I've got that German/Austrian logic that made the Mercedes-Benz
possible, and a mechanical engineer for a father.
The spotlights moving back and forth outside my window drew
me to look 20 floors down. There was a
crew of a dozen men, unloading 3 foot by 5 foot steel plates in 20-high stacks
from a flatbed. They were using a
crane. The spotlights were obvious; it
was 10:30 pm on a Sunday night. I
watched these guys for a while, and after about ten minutes I was already
acting like a (albeit inexperienced) foreman:
there was only one rigging for the crane. That meant that after the guys on the flatbed
secured a load and let the crane take it away, they had to wait several minutes
for the guys on the ground to help set down the load and unhook the rigging,
sending it back on the crane to the flatbed.
"If they just had two riggings..." I mumbled to no one, "the guys on the
truck wouldn't have to just stand there.
They could get the next load ready to go. They could be finished in half the
time!" I shook my head. The impracticality of most people is mind-boggling,
and this wasn't the first time that being a Kaschmitter watching others work
had nearly driven me insane.
Knowing I could do nothing about this, I concentrated on the
men themselves. No hard hats. No gloves.
No steel-toed boots. I couldn't
believe anyone with this type of work experience would go to a job site this
naked, but at least these men were fully clothed. In a way, I sort of admired their
tenacity. It took guts to do what they
were doing--like playing American football without a helmet and all that other
gear. I must've watched the men for 20
or 30 minutes--no one got hurt, not even a pinched finger.
In spite of the lack of bloodshed that night, I realize
that, in all likelihood, someone had been injured or even killed on every other
building in this city. It was impossible
to think that hundreds of 26-floor apartment buildings, office buildings, subway
tunnels, and malls could've been built without casualties.
Some people might look at Shanghai, then, and see each
high-rise as a metaphorical grave marker.
And yes--a huge amount of resources and risk went into each one, and
that's not without some sort of price.
However, I choose to look at Shanghai differently. Maybe it's the western American in me, but,
in spite of the risks and the costs, I see each high-rise as a testament to the
Chinese people--the oldest continuous civilization on Earth. Their lack of Western safety precautions
hasn't prevented one of the biggest cities on the planet from being built up
almost overnight. It's progress. It's like the railroad back in the Old West.
Looking down at the little Chinese men rushing about the
site that night, glowing like dynamos, I was struck by something: the spotlights cast huge shadows of the men
on the freshly-poured concrete, magnifying each man to ten times his size. One Chinese man may be small, but the shadow
he casts is huge.
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