Shanghai building fall down and go boom

[bailewen]

Guarantfuckintee it a construction issue.

The building has no foundation and is....er....was stuck into the ground with a couple of playground poles because the builders were just skimping on supplies. It's how everything gets built here or have you forgotten. They plaster a shitty covering over stuff and just make an attempt to let it look good but anything not visible from the outside is made of play-dough or, to use the common parlance, out of tofu. Like the wiring in every building I have ever lived in here so far. It's barely thicker than an extension cord and it's supposed to be running up 40 amps? What the hell good are 3 25amp circuit breakers when they all run off a single copper wire that is barely good enough to run a toaster...never mind an electric water heater or an air conditioner.

Why do all the bathrooms smell like sewage? It's because they couldn't be bothered to spent the extra 10 kuai on a p-trap for the drains.

Guaranteed they just figured that they could skimp on the foundation and pocket the money saved because once the building was up, no one would be able to tell. They know how to build a decent building. The construction industry is just notoriously corrupt and unbelievably cheap and this is just one example. It's only notable because it happened in Shanghai which is supposed to be more modern but freeway overpass collapses and other building failures are not so rare.

We're talking about a business culture where they added toxic chemicals to baby food in order to cheat seem to have more protein in other tests. Thank god those guys were actually put to death but I lost two pets because they did the same thing with the cat food being sold here. Folks tend to be incredibly short sighted here. No once cares about quality and the concept of paying more for something that lasts so it actually costs less in the long run is not really known. They shot themselves in the foot with the cat food because now I will never buy cat food in China again for the rest of my life. (cheaper to just feed the cat leftover people food anyways. At least it's not poisonous)

Another problem is the vicious prejudice against actual labor. Only white collar work is respected and craftsmanship is a completely alien concept. If you work with your hands you are considered a dumb country hick. 10 years in Xi'an and I still have not found a single professional plumber, carpenter, painter or electician. Just lots of peasants who came to the city, spent a couple kuai on some cheap tools and started selling their *ahem*... "services". Except the work they do is always shit so I have taken to buying supplies and doing things myself whenever possible and against the strong protestations of the inlaws who always want me to hire a "professional" which I would if they existed here but they don't so I don't.

This building just REEKS of all the problems I have just enumerated and more.
It's a fucking joke.

[edededed]

Damn... Builders in Japan also skimp on things to pocket the money later, but they don't go so far as to have the buildings fall down like that... Sorry to hear about your cats, Omar - that sucks.

[grzegorz]

I also hear that this was in an area where rich foreigners live.

I guess the lessons from the szechuan earthquake still haven't been learned.

Yes this is the sad thing about China. Someone somewhere was making or saving a lot of money off this shoddy construction and basically didn't give a rat's ass as to what happened to the people inside. So much corruption that I doubt inspectors would have made a difference.

I sometimes get down on China, but at other times I'm convinced this is the direction any old society would go in. The attitude seems to be "as long as I get mine..." Before leaving the States I thought this was a somewhat polite society, but now that I'm back I find the same things happening here they're just less obvious.

[bailewen]

See I don't really think there was anything relevant to be learned from the Sichuan earthquake. This was no earthquake. The thing just toppled over because the ground was kind of soft and they didn't bother building a foundation. A building that tall should have a foundation that goes down the equivalent of several floors. That thing was just sitting on top of the earth.

The other thing about the Sichuan quake is that I really can't blame massive corruption or shoddy building practices for those deaths. I am really sympathetic towards what happened there. That was a HUGE earthquake and in an area which traditionally just doesn't get quakes. I have always been scared by the Chinese buildings just because I grew up in California and the buildings here in Xi'an are mostly all made of brick and mortar. That's great if your worried about fire but for earthquakes it's just a deathtrap. But you can't blame them for building with what they have. In the Swiss Alps people have homes build basically of stacked stones but it's not earthquake country so who cares?

I can't get worked up over people building houses that are not earthquake resistant when they live in a place that is not really known for quakes.

[grzegorz]

See I don't really think there was anything relevant to be learned from the Sichuan earthquake. This was no earthquake. The thing just toppled over because the ground was kind of soft and they didn't bother building a foundation. A building that tall should have a foundation that goes down the equivalent of several floors. That thing was just sitting on top of the earth.

The other thing about the Sichuan quake is that I really can't blame massive corruption or shoddy building practices for those deaths. I am really sympathetic towards what happened there. That was a HUGE earthquake and in an area which traditionally just doesn't get quakes. I have always been scared by the Chinese buildings just because I grew up in California and the buildings here in Xi'an are mostly all made of brick and mortar. That's great if your worried about fire but for earthquakes it's just a deathtrap. But you can't blame them for building with what they have. In the Swiss Alps people have homes build basically of stacked stones but it's not earthquake country so who cares?

I can't get worked up over people building houses that are not earthquake resistant when they live in a place that is not really known for quakes.

Hi Omar,

HBO recently aired a documentary about the sichuan earthquake disaster. Not sure if you've seen it. But the reality is in a lot of neighborhoods a lot of buildings stayed standing and the schools collasped.



Here's a Chinese program about the same situation.



SOS...the same old shit.

[Michael]

Don't rule out the possibility that they simply forgot to put in a foundation that was in the plans. D'oh!

[bailewen]

...or took one look at the plans that called for a 40 foot deep ditch and went, "WTF?!? That's a lot of work man. Let's just drop some posts into the dirt to stabilize the building. That should do it. Mei wenti!"

That's more how I picture it. The builders were like, shit man, are you nuts? It's not like the whole damn building's gonna fall over or anything . . . who's gonna notice?

[Dmitri]

...or took one look at the plans that called for a 40 foot deep ditch and went, "WTF?!? That's a lot of work man. Let's just drop some posts into the dirt to stabilize the building. That should do it. Mei wenti!"

That's more how I picture it. The builders were like, shit man, are you nuts? It's not like the whole damn building's gonna fall over or anything . . . who's gonna notice?

Yep, much like in Soviet Russia -- plus add to that all of them being drunk or suffering from a major hangover.

[bailewen]

And being paid slave wages even by Chinese standards and sometimes not even at all. Some builders pay on consignment. You get paid after the building is finished. In the meantime, you live on the construction site and they feed you. But then when the project is finished, builders have been known to come up with excuses for not paying or to just keep creating red tape and other bureaucratic obstacles that can last for many months. Every once in a while a news snippet will show up in the online media in China about a worker who committed suicide over this issue. They leave the countryside for the city, get a job in construction, get basically trapped in an unfair labor situation and are now even too broke to get back home to the countryside. After trying unsuccessfully to get paid for several months, they jump from the building that they just built.

With that sort of treatment, what kind of workmanship can really be expected?

[Harvey]

Well as it's my job, foundation design that is, the piles (little sticky out concrete feet thing you see attached to the pad foundation) have all sheared, and since they were excavating the underground garage that is not the way to build one esp near to a river but hell it's not like i work in one of the most geologically soft towns on the planet LOL

[Michael]

And being paid slave wages even by Chinese standards and sometimes not even at all. Some builders pay on consignment. You get paid after the building is finished. In the meantime, you live on the construction site and they feed you. But then when the project is finished, builders have been known to come up with excuses for not paying or to just keep creating red tape and other bureaucratic obstacles that can last for many months. Every once in a while a news snippet will show up in the online media in China about a worker who committed suicide over this issue. They leave the countryside for the city, get a job in construction, get basically trapped in an unfair labor situation and are now even too broke to get back home to the countryside. After trying unsuccessfully to get paid for several months, they jump from the building that they just built.

With that sort of treatment, what kind of workmanship can really be expected?

So apparently Omar, we're both in China for love of gong-fu and Asian womins, right, 'cause it sure ain't for most of the other stuff you see here on a daily basis. Take the good with the bad.

[bailewen]

...and the food and the lifestyle that, for a foreigner at least, is far more sane than what passes for living in the US. Nice vacation time, fairly short work week. Love of the language, the history, the philosophy and much of the traditional culture where it exists. I love the awsome kung fu soap operas and I love learning to read the Dao De Jing in the original Chinese. I love the feeling that I am doing something meaningful with my life here and l love my Chinese wife.

I love huge piles of stuff about this place and do not place the blame for all these awful problems on the backs of the people experiencing them. I have a lot of compassion for what's going on so yes, I take the good with the bad. Nobody is forcing me to live here so on balance, I am obviously enjoying my life here. It's not for everyone though.

[Michael]

well said

[grzegorz]

So apparently Omar, we're both in China for love of gong-fu and Asian womins, right, 'cause it sure ain't for most of the other stuff you see here on a daily basis. Take the good with the bad.

You're in China because KFC ROCKS!!!

[gosao]

So apparently Omar, we're both in China for love of gong-fu and Asian womins, right, 'cause it sure ain't for most of the other stuff you see here on a daily basis. Take the good with the bad.

You're in China because KFC ROCKS!!!

So does Pizza Hut!