Thursday, January 05, 2006
Some Chinese Construction and an Interview.
We're in Hong Kong, well actually Macau tonight. Hong Kong is great. An Oasis.
The interview went well.
We took a night train all the way uo to Zhengzhou from Shanghai on the evening of the 26th of december. 14 hours later we were in the provincial capital with wide tree lined avenues, but the same disjointed boxed architecture circled by high rise tenements that distinguishes Chinese cities. It was smoggy. Northern China seems to be perpetually foggy in the winter months. As much to do with (fortunately) no wind as to do with the Coal driven power station. Still it seem most power on the plains is provided by coal and fossil fuels.
We chatted with president Li, GM of 7 stars Design Institute and our prospective employer. We talked about the place of China in the world, how many archtects are wonderingwhat isgoing on in China, with relatively little published outside of China. Shanghai has certaily been iconic in the quest for real design. The more recent buildig in Shangahi are light years ahead of the dsigns produced three years aog. It is an astonisheing change, and really noticeable.
They drove us out to Zhengzhou new town. 400 sq km designated for a newcity, west of the old town. Zhengzhou is a city of 2 to 5 million people depending on which guidebook you read. It is the capital of Hennan provine. Proudly hailed by the natives as the cradle of Chinese civilisation, hoe of the Ming and Song Dynasties, flooded regularly by the Yellow river. It is one of those massive places in China that you never hear about. Hennan is the most populous province as well. Around 200 million people I think.
The new town is massive. Will have 8 universities (Zhengzhou prides itself as a Uni town). It has a 36,000sqm Conference Centre, with two main halls, the upper one with a clear span of 100m. Althoug to be honest 100m spanning roofs are really de riguer in China, and have been around for ages. But, it was still amazing to see.
the conference Centre forms part of the centre of two giant rings, marked by highways of course, the inner ring skirted on its circumference by 30 and 40 storey office and appartment blocks. The conference centre wil be joined by a 400m skyscraper rising out of an artificial lake at the notional centre of the circles. The outer circle, I think, only exists in the minds eye. The scale of the development is just boggling. And there is no end in sight. President Li, told us that the company is practically guaranteed at least one building of a similar scale for this site during 2006.
The showed us some of their projects in the office as well. The most prestigious one at present is a 99 by 99 m pyramid memorial (Ceide Fields anyone?) that is to be built alongwith a concert hall at the foot of a cliff of 3 carved heads (think Mt Rushmore, only presumably bigger) of various important Chinese from the 20th century. It took 70 years to carve them from the rock, and they are finishing this year in time for, well everything. The pyramid has to be finished by September. Built by September. It isnt even on site yet.
We were lucky enough to get a tour of another site with a couple of German clerks of works out here. They are working on a building for the firm that Jean Louis of the famous Robert clan - our hosts in Shanghai- It was an astounding experience. Ive never experienced the way they use labour here. It is an unending resource. I can only list a couple of the astonishing things here. For example - it is cheaper to do entire buildings in in-situ concrete than to use PC concrete. It is cheaper to hire 4 guys with chisels and lump hammers to chisel out a mistakenly cast 8m by 450 by 600 reinforced concrete beam than to buy a jack hammer. (this happens quite often I am sure- and there will still be guys queing up somewhere every morning looking for work on a site. Any site. The project was (I think) 6500 sqm plant and offices, appointment to completion in 13 months. No components other than windows were prefabricated. At one point there were 400 people were working on site. They had only two injuries on site which is a remarkable achievment. The roof arrives as rools of steel sheeting and the have a roll press on site where they press the rolls to the desired profile. No sandwich roof panels even. Madness.
This could mean that conceivably you could design and build a 72 storey tower and have each floor with a completely different plan and it would still be the same construction cost (within a consistent envelope of course). Noobody gets rich here thinking about a better way to do it. They just get rich by getting it done. They may as well be mining people as coal. (On an aside 6000 people died in mining accidents in China last year- most of them coal mines. Well over 500 have died since weve been here.)
And then they do have all of these 72 storey towers in these massive new towns lying completely empty waiting for the day that they maybe needed. Some have already been empty for 3 years. And there will be another few in Zhenzhou by the look of it too.
And the roads. Shangahi and Beijing are fairly clogged with traffic now. But there are 4 lane highways disapparing over the horizon into fields designated as Shanghai new town, empty of traffic. Puts the old 'bypass' system of road construction to shame.
The country, or at least the construction industry, just runs on feudalism. Things get built the same way as they built the damn wall of China. I cant see them getting anywhere, it is a boom country with 25% unemployment. You have to pay for all education, so the Indians will wipe the floor with the Chinese in the next decade when it comes to development of software and that sort of thing. Word on the ground here is that after the World Expo in 2010 in Shanghai, it is all going to come to an end... and Id well believe it. I cant see how it can keep going. I said this during the interview and they were astounded. THey just looked at me and said, it cant stop. They have 8 universities to build in this new town. They will come. Everyone will have a car and a job and live in a city...they thought I was mad.
They wined and dined us and put us on a flight home, full of the local white wine. Letahl stuff of course. It wouldnt be good if it wasnt I imagine. The people, without exception, that we met that day were exceptionally friendly, especially President Li and his staff. They are all exceptionally ambitious as well it is sure.
I hope the bubble doesnt burst for their sake. In the meantime we will be trying to communicate without, or even through interpreters. It is hard going and it leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding.
The office havent ever actually worked with, or rather employed foreigners before, so it is a bit of an up hill struggle with communication and minutae, not to mention Chinese negotiation. They keep cutting lumps out of our agreement, although we arent even surte that they understood teh terms we were asking in the first place so we havnt got near starting (or agreeing) anything yet, and I imagine nothing will really happen until after the Chinese New Year 28th Jan.
It could be that we are hanging around until then. We'll probably head south to Vietnam to try and save a few pennies and then if the job doesnt work out we'll head south to Sinagapore and find a flight to Europe. And thatll be that. Maybe a couple of weeks on a beach just to make you all sick. Or oursleves with some Avian variant. Hopefully not.
If we do work here it'll be an education. And not for the 8 universities they are planning to build here. I think the only want us for the decorative aspect of two european architects.... we shall see. they had better pay us first. Or else theyll never see Trinity College rise from the plains of Hennan. They'd love that I think.
The interview went well.
We took a night train all the way uo to Zhengzhou from Shanghai on the evening of the 26th of december. 14 hours later we were in the provincial capital with wide tree lined avenues, but the same disjointed boxed architecture circled by high rise tenements that distinguishes Chinese cities. It was smoggy. Northern China seems to be perpetually foggy in the winter months. As much to do with (fortunately) no wind as to do with the Coal driven power station. Still it seem most power on the plains is provided by coal and fossil fuels.
We chatted with president Li, GM of 7 stars Design Institute and our prospective employer. We talked about the place of China in the world, how many archtects are wonderingwhat isgoing on in China, with relatively little published outside of China. Shanghai has certaily been iconic in the quest for real design. The more recent buildig in Shangahi are light years ahead of the dsigns produced three years aog. It is an astonisheing change, and really noticeable.
They drove us out to Zhengzhou new town. 400 sq km designated for a newcity, west of the old town. Zhengzhou is a city of 2 to 5 million people depending on which guidebook you read. It is the capital of Hennan provine. Proudly hailed by the natives as the cradle of Chinese civilisation, hoe of the Ming and Song Dynasties, flooded regularly by the Yellow river. It is one of those massive places in China that you never hear about. Hennan is the most populous province as well. Around 200 million people I think.
The new town is massive. Will have 8 universities (Zhengzhou prides itself as a Uni town). It has a 36,000sqm Conference Centre, with two main halls, the upper one with a clear span of 100m. Althoug to be honest 100m spanning roofs are really de riguer in China, and have been around for ages. But, it was still amazing to see.
the conference Centre forms part of the centre of two giant rings, marked by highways of course, the inner ring skirted on its circumference by 30 and 40 storey office and appartment blocks. The conference centre wil be joined by a 400m skyscraper rising out of an artificial lake at the notional centre of the circles. The outer circle, I think, only exists in the minds eye. The scale of the development is just boggling. And there is no end in sight. President Li, told us that the company is practically guaranteed at least one building of a similar scale for this site during 2006.
The showed us some of their projects in the office as well. The most prestigious one at present is a 99 by 99 m pyramid memorial (Ceide Fields anyone?) that is to be built alongwith a concert hall at the foot of a cliff of 3 carved heads (think Mt Rushmore, only presumably bigger) of various important Chinese from the 20th century. It took 70 years to carve them from the rock, and they are finishing this year in time for, well everything. The pyramid has to be finished by September. Built by September. It isnt even on site yet.
We were lucky enough to get a tour of another site with a couple of German clerks of works out here. They are working on a building for the firm that Jean Louis of the famous Robert clan - our hosts in Shanghai- It was an astounding experience. Ive never experienced the way they use labour here. It is an unending resource. I can only list a couple of the astonishing things here. For example - it is cheaper to do entire buildings in in-situ concrete than to use PC concrete. It is cheaper to hire 4 guys with chisels and lump hammers to chisel out a mistakenly cast 8m by 450 by 600 reinforced concrete beam than to buy a jack hammer. (this happens quite often I am sure- and there will still be guys queing up somewhere every morning looking for work on a site. Any site. The project was (I think) 6500 sqm plant and offices, appointment to completion in 13 months. No components other than windows were prefabricated. At one point there were 400 people were working on site. They had only two injuries on site which is a remarkable achievment. The roof arrives as rools of steel sheeting and the have a roll press on site where they press the rolls to the desired profile. No sandwich roof panels even. Madness.
This could mean that conceivably you could design and build a 72 storey tower and have each floor with a completely different plan and it would still be the same construction cost (within a consistent envelope of course). Noobody gets rich here thinking about a better way to do it. They just get rich by getting it done. They may as well be mining people as coal. (On an aside 6000 people died in mining accidents in China last year- most of them coal mines. Well over 500 have died since weve been here.)
And then they do have all of these 72 storey towers in these massive new towns lying completely empty waiting for the day that they maybe needed. Some have already been empty for 3 years. And there will be another few in Zhenzhou by the look of it too.
And the roads. Shangahi and Beijing are fairly clogged with traffic now. But there are 4 lane highways disapparing over the horizon into fields designated as Shanghai new town, empty of traffic. Puts the old 'bypass' system of road construction to shame.
The country, or at least the construction industry, just runs on feudalism. Things get built the same way as they built the damn wall of China. I cant see them getting anywhere, it is a boom country with 25% unemployment. You have to pay for all education, so the Indians will wipe the floor with the Chinese in the next decade when it comes to development of software and that sort of thing. Word on the ground here is that after the World Expo in 2010 in Shanghai, it is all going to come to an end... and Id well believe it. I cant see how it can keep going. I said this during the interview and they were astounded. THey just looked at me and said, it cant stop. They have 8 universities to build in this new town. They will come. Everyone will have a car and a job and live in a city...they thought I was mad.
They wined and dined us and put us on a flight home, full of the local white wine. Letahl stuff of course. It wouldnt be good if it wasnt I imagine. The people, without exception, that we met that day were exceptionally friendly, especially President Li and his staff. They are all exceptionally ambitious as well it is sure.
I hope the bubble doesnt burst for their sake. In the meantime we will be trying to communicate without, or even through interpreters. It is hard going and it leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding.
The office havent ever actually worked with, or rather employed foreigners before, so it is a bit of an up hill struggle with communication and minutae, not to mention Chinese negotiation. They keep cutting lumps out of our agreement, although we arent even surte that they understood teh terms we were asking in the first place so we havnt got near starting (or agreeing) anything yet, and I imagine nothing will really happen until after the Chinese New Year 28th Jan.
It could be that we are hanging around until then. We'll probably head south to Vietnam to try and save a few pennies and then if the job doesnt work out we'll head south to Sinagapore and find a flight to Europe. And thatll be that. Maybe a couple of weeks on a beach just to make you all sick. Or oursleves with some Avian variant. Hopefully not.
If we do work here it'll be an education. And not for the 8 universities they are planning to build here. I think the only want us for the decorative aspect of two european architects.... we shall see. they had better pay us first. Or else theyll never see Trinity College rise from the plains of Hennan. They'd love that I think.
// posted by Dub @ Thursday, January 05, 2006 
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Your site is very helpful
https://antinspect.blogspot.com.eg/
https://antinspect.wordpress.com/
http://antinspect.bravesites.com/blog
https://www.prokr.net/ksa/jeddah-water-leaks-detection-isolate-companies/
http://egyclassic.com/
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