Omar (bailewen) wrote: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.
Omar (bailewen) wrote:...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?
Omar (bailewen) wrote: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?
Michael wrote:
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.
grzegorz wrote:Michael wrote:
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!!!
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