Evolution of Sidewalks

Nowadays, usually you don't notice immediately that China used to be an autarkic or self-sustaining country. At least that was the initial plan under the Mao era and probably a big concept long before. So what does this mean? It does not have to implicate that everything is the same, or more exact, that there exists only one representative object in each category you could think of, the ideal. For instance, there was only one type of clothing, the Zhong Shan suit. Everyone had to wear it, even the woman, no under-flowers peaking out of the over-gray allowed. Then there was only one concept of harvesting or manufacturing, it had to work everywhere in China no matter what soils or climates or attitudes there might be regionally, it had to be grain or iron in accordance with the unfailing central plan of the authorities. Today China is more modern. However, quite a few things have not changed. One such steady rock in the waters of change is the construction of sidewalks across mainland China.

The level of disrespect the design of sidewalks shows to any kind of evolutionary force of practicability is marvelous, given that surely more than hundreds of millions of people walking on Chinese sidewalks day by day.  Or maybe this is the crucial point: do Chinese actually walk that much on the sidewalks, or do they actually prefer to walk on the road despite that the car traffic is "bu anquan" (not secure)? In fact, the latter is the case as you will observe instantly when visiting China. Now, why is that?

Well, one probably does not want to fall into the 20cm deep quadratic basin surrounding the small trees planted in regular intervals of about 10 meters and usually cover about two thirds of the width of the sidewalk. Uninformed might think that the remaining stretch of one third of the width might actually be wide enough to pass by the trees and the sidewalk might thus be still usable to the average person, but they are mistaken. They are not aware that the other one third is guaranteed to be plastered with these notoriously uncomfortable protruding markings for the blinds. I do not have anything against this circumspect intention to ease the navigation for people with impaired sight. It is only that it would be outrageously dangerous for a blind person to rely on the continuity of these markings, and, probably as a consequence, are neither used by the blinds. Others are not happy about the uneven footing either and thus it is no wonder that sidewalks are rarely used at all.  However, judging from the amount of cars parking on the unused sidewalks, I maybe was wrong about their resistance to evolution. Becoming parking lot might be the fate of Chinese sidewalks. That indeed would make them better adapted to  the Chinese future.

Improving the outdoor bathroom

They gave me this nice office in my institute when I came this spring as the first "pioneer" of my group in Shanghai, which subsequently moved to the same place a couple of months later. There was this free faculty office not in use, although in my impression one of the best rooms in the whole building. It is built as an included exterior on what might have been planned as a nice balcony along the side of the institute. Apparently in some later stages of construction they noticed a shortage of rooms and attached these offices on the balcony, and fortunately,  maybe not daring to fall back to concrete bricks, they used exclusively windows as walls. Although this is less convenient between too neighboring offices, there is a nice tree on one side of the window front which makes the office actually quite pleasant, although I might reconsider the assessment when the temperate keeps falling in the same rate as in the recent days.   The third side towards the remaining stretch of balcony is also entirely made of glass windows. Of course the rest of the balcony now is not in use - apart from a considerable number of cramped air conditioning systems of course - and all black from the spreading dust of the Beijing air. Looking through this side window does not offer a very pleasant view though because the next building, the physics department, fills the scenery entirely, overtowering our institute by 10 floors the least.
However, recently the sight of the physics department building turns out to be very interesting: one can observe the renovating process of the outside of the building. I have to say, when I first noticed that they are about to renovate this building, I was quite relieved, it was just such an eye sore. If I would vote for the ugliest ever designed exterior of any kind of architecture, I would probably keep thinking about these Chinese 70-80's blocks with on the outside attached ceramic tiling. The tiling are usually light yellow-dirty and look like a bathroom turned inside out.
In any case it was indeed interesting to observe the daily progress of the renovation work. First, and in agreement with my own understanding of the progress of making old walls look new, the old ceramic tiling was covered with a thin stretch of cement to cover old scratches; of course all done by hand of some migrant workers on a shabby and dangerously windy scaffold or hanging attached to the roof seemingly floating in midair. I was even a bit impressed and silently nodding in affirmative, when they  pressed some kind of aluminium net  onto the surface of the wet cement to improve its stability and adherence. The next day, we already gave in to some speculation at lunch time about what color they might use to paint the building. High in discourse were gray or red. Since white would turn gray instantly (and maybe some other colors, too), the probability of gray was handled as the highest at least in the long run (that is a couple of weeks after finishing). However, it turned out that they were far from finished. The next couple of days passed by with first painting the wall white (thus gray seemed to win). But then,  as if out of context, the worker started to draw lines on the fresh paint resembling a giant vertical checkerboard. These lines were first drafted with a small pencil it seemed, using weighted ropes to ensure verticallity. These lines already made me ponder quite a bit about the goal and the design. However, they hadn't finished yet. Next the thin lines were thickened with black Chinese ink ignoring that gravitational forces kept spilling black droplets over the white background. Then tapes were applied exactly on top of the black lines with the half finished tape roles dangling all about. At this stage I already resolved that thinking about what they actually attempted might be just a fruitless exercise.  So  looking out of the window from time to time would be just fine. Finally, today, the progress arrived at the final stages: It's just incredible, they sprayed some marble-like color blend on the wall! Now that solved the riddle and left me in stupefaction. They indeed upgraded the ceramic tiling! The inside-out bathroom now get's marble! But to save the marble, they just paint color that looks like marble! As it is in the upper floors anyway, where no one could reach and feel the wall, this is just the same, right? The black checkerboard pattern serves as the jointing imitation of the marble imitation! The tapes help to protect the black paint from the marble spray!

I can't help being impressed by this environmental friendly and ingenious design!

 

New Posters

This blog will tell something about the intricacies of daily life in China and all other interesting things that come across my mind. Let's just start with the advertising poster of the Dong Cheng (East Side) district we saw today during lunch in the Jiauzi Restaurant around the corner. We had this tasteful, fresh-made tea-leaves mixed with pig dumpling and some tofu carrot flavored variety and noticed these poster hanging next to the giant jar of bluish Dasuan (garlic) on the dubiously yellowish wall. The layout of the poster is just telling. It is one of these "what is the official opinion about how the future and your home should look like" posters or propaganda pamphlets. These banners with large yellow white characters on red ground are an increasingly popular sight in the streets and attached to highway bridges in Beijing. I am not sure if the presence of this paroles is recently increasing or it is just that I am more aware of these because my reading capabilities improves. They are ranging from "Let's build together a modern China" to "Unswervingly push the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics forward into future" and the likes.

One poster on the wall read "Be a civilized and polite Beijinger to build a harmonious charm of the new East Side!". This one on the picture reads "Build up an exemplary civilized city district, be a civilized citizen of the East Side!"
To those who are not familiar with the ancient city design of Beijing, the Dong Cheng district is one of the two inner districts formerly enclosed by the city wall. Accordingly there used to be a lot of old and royal buildings inherited from China's dynasties, but old quarters are now rarely seen as they were mostly teared down in the last 10-20 years or so to build these nice buildings and broad streets the poster is advertising of the "New China". I think these posters are thus for those to remind that one should not be guided by its own sense of aesthetic, but rather feel reminded of the warm guidance of the great party's prospective insights of the Chinese future.

In any case, I don't think that a lot of common people give attention to these posters really. They are much more concerned with the choice of what to eat. Next to us two elder Chinese workers from outside of Beijing had apparently trouble to read the menu, and, too proud to admit their illiteracy, pointed at our dishes  on our table and ordered the same. A good move in principle - I did use it myself in times of less conversational fluency - but  when paying the bill we could not avoid a chuckle about their disappointment when discovering that half of the Jauzi fillings were just vegetarian...