Housing

Interesting contrast or inconsistency. When you think of china what do you think? Over 4000 years of civilized history?

Independent inventor of rice cultivation, black powder, printing blocks, paper, the compass, or shark fin soup? How about traditional buildings like the forbidden palace or Buddhist monasteries and Taoist or Confucius temples? Those things are all here. There are also scores of new buildings, temporary buildings, modern short lived buildings. The modern buildings outnumber the old by far. This last week I was talking about houses with some people and the issue of age came up. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the age of buildings or the role age played in the quality of buildings.
When a building was built plays a big role in the quality of the building and quality of the apartments within. Not only because building materials are better or more modern in newer buildings, but mostly because the wiring, plumbing, walls, doors, windows, and floors get old and degrade. When talking about the apartment you live in you definitely know in what year it was built and most people seems to have a pretty good idea what your apartment is like just from that. This is all pretty standard stuff. In the US it is about the same. You know a house built in the 70’s or 90’s is a bit different and when remodeling might be needed. The thing that is different here ~ the time scales… An apartment from ’98 is old. Not only is it old, it probably needs renovation and remodeling. The plumbing has probably rusted, the floors are not flat, and the walls might be cracking, molding, or slowly (quickly?) crumbling, and the windows definitely leak. This isn’t to mention that painting isn’t common here. Instead whitewashing is, and in high traffic areas like the university classrooms, it is a yearly process. I am not saying that everything 10 years old is falling down, but the perspective I got last week, was places 10 years old are not good, and you should probably find someplace newer.
Most of the buildings here have been built in the last 20 years, if not the last 15 or 10. China is reportedly to add millions of square meters of residential space every year. Every this relatively new, even though it may not appear that way. Buildings really do age quickly here. Probably do to a different maintenance paradigm, no maintenance in some cases.
On campus there were some one-story brick row houses on campus. That was at least until last week. Now there is one little row house. The rest were destroyed by a large front-end loader and carried off in a dump truck. The remaining house bears the scar of its neighbors on its east wall. The fate of the row houses has been long foreseen. They used to stand amongst a towering forest of 6-7 story apartments buildings providing housing to the university staff and faculty. The row houses were out of place and taking up valuable apartment building space. The last row house still stands because the inhabitant doesn’t want to move out and the university can’t force them out. So there is currently a standoff. Who knows how long it will last.
A similar process is also going on behind the university campus. What was farmland last week, is now being turned, compacted and prepared for construction of an expansion for the university. The fields were surrounded on all sides of apartment complexes and 6 lane roads; definitely out of place and again the eventual destruction/construction a long foreseen result. Development is a big force and consumes…

Big picture update:
Tiger Park (story)
Scenes
Nature
Strange

Generally any album with a recent date has new pictures.