As I recall I left you with workers pounding on concrete and the promise of telling you about ownership laws in China. I am sure you are breathless with anticipation on these subjects and more with regard to the ongoing building boom here, so I’ll not leave you in suspense any longer. Let’s get on with it.
In China you do not buy property like you do in America. Once you buy a property in America, be it a condo or a piece of improved land – land with water, sceptic/sewage lines and electric run to it, that property is yours forever and ever, Amen. Unless you are cheated by imminent domain or foiled by Agenda 21 (did you read about that yet?), that property is yours to modify or sell, or retain for future generations, as you see fit.
In China you buy an apartment and retain ownership for 70 years, after which the property is remanded to the government. The reasoning behind that is that one must surely be in his/her twenties to buy an apartment. If they retain it for 70 years, they will be 90 years old. Even in a country known for its citizens’ longevity, 90 years is quite a venerable old age. And, most 90 year olds do not live alone. By that age they have either moved in with relatives or have been relegated to a new facet of Chinese life: an Old Folk’s Home.
Now, with capitalism running rampant, people are buying new apartments like they buy clothes. Some people, like Shelin’s parents or my friend Gary, own two or three apartments. And there are more apartment buildings being built every day. The neighborhood where Gary’s current apartment is located is slated for destruction in two years. He is not dismayed. He is prepared to move into his new apartment, as soon as it is completed.
Even though each person retains the rights to a dwelling for 70 years the government has assessed a building’s standard longevity to only about 10 or 20 years. That guarantees the cycle of tearing down, building and buying will continue for the foreseeable future. I believe that is one reason the Chinese economy is booming.
Please note that the ‘seventy year rule’ only applies to city dwellings. Rural homesteads, such as Sam’s parents in Xi Shui, or farmer’s land holdings remain theirs for generations. However, as I understand it, that too is changing. The more people move into cities, the more farms become government collectives and the more people make farming their daytime job, instead of farming being a way of life.
I think, all over the world, farming as a way of life is disappearing, don’t you? Consider the current farm situation in America, for one. But that would be the topic for a different blog, not for mine. I’m just indulging in speculation and sharing my ideas. As with any topic, please feel free to email me at teamkrejados@gmail.com; maybe we could have an interesting and enlightening discussion about it.
Back to construction methods, which is what this post is supposed to be about.
Last entry I reflected on the wacky, disorderly way things are done here. It seems there is no methodology to it at all! Landscaping is done and then a week later dug up to put a gas line or electrical line in. Paving is complete and then torn up to reroute a water main. Even in repaving the main road in front of campus I’ve seen examples of this backward approach to work. The road, newly asphalted, has been dug up every few meters because the pavers have covered up the manhole covers. Manholes are not a concrete tube, stretching down into the sewer like they are in America. They are brick well-looking constructions that reach down to the sewer line and are topped off with a manhole cover.
I’ve seen nothing of the systematic building processes so familiar from American construction.
What I have seen is age-old construction methods. Concrete, mixed by hand in a pile on the ground and shoveled into a wheelbarrow. Buckets of water, hauled by ‘shoulder poles’ – bamboo pole carried on one’s shoulder with two buckets hanging down supply the concrete mixer. Bricks, painstakingly laid in whatever formation they need to take: a wall, to cover a gap where a window or doorway once was, or a well configuration, to act as a manhole. Painting done by hand rather than with an air-driven paint gun. Is it because migrant workers are unskilled labor and wouldn’t know how to use modern tools like concrete mixers and power tools?
No, I think it is just because that is the way things are done in China. I have seen workers use power tools; heavens knows those grinders and pipe threaders got on my nerves enough. And there are welders everywhere, welding to beat the devil but never putting up an arc shield. Wonder how many passersby have gotten retina damage from looking at that entrancing blue arc?
Just like there are street sweeping vehicles – I’ve seen them, but usually it is humans that do the sweeping while the vehicles remain parked, I’m sure there are and have been advances in construction technology, but most of the labor is physically intensive and human driven.
We all know a few well placed hits with a jackhammer will take down that concrete wall in the apartment above me, but what will those migrant workers do to earn their pay if they don’t have a wall to swing sledgehammers at for the next ten hours?
Same issue with the mining industry: instead of modern mining techniques, miners employ age-old equipment and methods. Same with ferrying raw goods down (or up) a river: there are barges, but the deckhands really have to work to earn their keep. I believe that, by keeping construction methods (among other professions) in the dark ages, the Chinese government is attempting to keep people working and thus keep the economy booming. Really, it is not such a bad idea.
Now if only the pay scales would match the economic boom! The constant lament is that no one gets paid enough to afford anything. New apartments being built today will sell for a few thousand Yuan per square meter, as opposed to maybe ten years ago when one could get a decent apartment in a good neighborhood for a few hundred Yuan per square foot. These new apartments are not any more luxurious or better appointed than their older counterparts – remember, they are being sold ‘bare’ and by the square meter, no amenities included.
About those amenities. Would flooring be considered an amenity? I would think so, seeing as it is a choice given to new apartment buyers.
While living elsewhere than in China I’ve often grumbled and muttered about my kitchen and bathroom flooring being of the patterned vinyl variety. Such flooring has ridges and ripples that tend to trap dirt and make it look worn and shabby and uncared for, after a while. Someone once told me that those ridges and ripples are necessary; otherwise one might slip and fall should the floor become wet.
While there might be a grain of truth to that, I contend that it is not so. Here, even outdoors the tile is smooth and shiny. One would think that slipping and falling would be worry #1. However, in my kitchen my biggest worry is how to keep all of that shiny, untextured tile clean and dust free.
I’ve said at times that living in China is like living an anachronism. It appears that working in China has the same effect. Migrant workers have to work hard to earn their money. I have to work hard to keep my house clean.
We’re just all hard workers, here in China!
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