Wow you get two posts this week, aren't you lucky! Well I have received some complaints ( Palko I am looking at you)that I don't include enough culture in my posts. So I have instituted the Culture corner and this week we will talk about something near and dear to many hearts out there, Chinese construction and home ownership. As most of you know already China is in a love affair with concrete buildings, they are cheap and quick. General course is to throw together a frame and then lightly plaster the interior walls with usually a single coat. As I have mentioned before as long as the building is 8 stories or below no elevator is required. The best part about this construction is that they do not include any hollow spaces in which to insulate or waterproof. Which is generally why you will see many buildings with tile or aluminum (said in an Australian style because Peter said it the other day and I had to try so hard not to laugh)cladding. The problem then becomes that it gets dirty real quick, especially when white tile is used. The next problem then becomes water and electrical service. It is all run on the outside of the building and in the rooms it is run along the ceiling, including what can only be the 8th floor waste pipe positioned directly above my toilet. Not to fear they wrapped the cap in clear tape so it will fall out along with the waste. This creates giant eyesores, as I was trying to figure out what makes Chinese buildings, even relatively new ones look, for lack of a better term, third world it was because they all giant wires and usually pvc pipes running all over them. Front and back, either side it makes no difference and if the wires are not needed anymore they are cut and wrapped in electrical tape left hanging around. These are small wires theses are mostly the 10 to 12 gauge 20 or 30 amp service wires, with phone and cable lines wrapped in with them. In my stairwell they actually drilled a hole through all the floors and ran a conduit up through all of them for the cable and telephone lines. Now at the top of each doorway they just cut a hole in the conduit and splice into whatever they need. When we got internet installed the other day the guy showed up with his man bag and it had a phone, wire, snips, wire stripper, and electrical tape. He checked the line in my room with his phone and made sure it wasn't active. Then he just took the line that was running into the room next to me(incidentally he was supposed to remove that line as well) and cut it. Then he just cut the phone line into my room, stripped the wires twisted them together and the applied a liberal coat of electrical tape. Luckily since there is no flammable material around we don't have to worry about electrical fires. They also installed a new air conditioner in my room. So the guys came in with all the pieces both and interior blower and an exterior fan. they hung the interior blower and put an outlet for it about 3 feet below and just ran a line from it to the the next nearest outlet and spliced it in. Then they got got on a seat with two strings attached to it and the other two lowered him out the window and he preceded to attach the exterior blower to the side of the building. Then he broke, with a small hammer strike, a hole in the window to run the lines out and of course he taped it up with clear tape to weatherproof it. This it was drives me nuts Chinese people think they are saving the environment and Americans are so wasteful because they rarely use their AC units in either summer and winter. When the truth is the one month a year they do run them the insulation in their homes is so poor I doubt the units are even running at 15% efficiency. The wall is porous, the windows have holes with tape all over them, so they have to run the unit non stop just to feel a change. At least we are smart enough to insulate and use thermostat controls.
Best story of the week, they have been rerouting a pipe behind our building and splicing a new line in. They cut the old pipe out and were welding in new sections. Of course when welding in China safety goggles are optional. So there was two guys standing on a ladder/part of the pipes, not the ones they were welding, about 15 feet up or so. No glasses of course and the one guy literally reaches out and lights his cigarette of the stream of sparks and melting metal coming from where the other guy is welding. Not only does that take guts but it is also the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. That would be like your furnace lighting his smokes off of your pilot light while he is working. I couldn't stop laughing for like 10 minutes, and knowing the Chinese I guarantee that wasn't his first smoke of the day either.
Well I hope this illuminated how daily life would be for you in China if you are a homeowner on the 37th floor and need to service your AC unit. Or if you wanted to put a ceiling fan in one of your rooms. Hope your drill has a hammer function (it's a tool world joke don't worry if you don't get it).
As a side note if you have direct questions that are just burning you up about how people on the other side of the world live, feel free to send them to me at patterson.24@wright.edu. Please include your name, age and if you are a single attractive girl who thinks overweight sarcastic guys who live in China might someday be the man of your dreams. Plus I will give you credit when I write about it.
