Protecting the Greenery

One of the amazing things the Chinese do with the onset of winter is to build frames and cloth blankets/tents for the shrubs and trees around Beijing.

A Visit to Tianjin

BF and I visited Tianjin on Saturday. We were lucky enough to have one of our co-workers (QL who grew up in Tianjin) as a great host and guide.




Picture of QL and TF with Driver Shen.
The city is less than 100km from Beijing. This is another one of those cities that I bet most of you have never heard of yet it is the third largest city in China behind Beijing and Shanghai. The PRC governs China at the following levels: Provinces, Autonomous Regions (like Tibet), Municipalities, and Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Tianjin is one of four self-governed municipalities along with Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing. Like all the Chinese cities that I have been too there is a lot of building and construction.

We have been here nearly a year and I did not realize how large Tianjin was so it caused me to do some population research. Here are some interesting gacts that I found. First lets look at population by agglomerations (include a central city and neighboring communities linked to it (e.g.) by continuous built-up areas or commute). Th. Brinkhoff: The Principal Agglomerations of the World, http://www.citypopulation.de, 2007-04-21

Chinese cities with world rank and populations size (NY is #4 at 21.8 million and Tokyo is #1):
Shanghai #9 - 17.3 Million
Guangzhou #16 - 14.5
Beijing #20 - 12.7
Shenzhen #28 - 9.0
Wuhan #30 - 8.6
Tianjin #36 - 8.0

For city proper population, according to Wikipedia I found the following:
Shanghai at #8 with population of 9.8MM; Beijing at #16 with 7.4MM and Tianjin at #28 with 5.1MM (with Mumbai being the most populated city and NYC at #13).

We visited an antique furniture store that also can reproduce pieces but decided to wait. We we did a little shopping where BF bought some art supplies for her Chinese watercolor painting (more to come on this in an upcoming blog). We had a nice lunch and picked up some Tianjin local snacks. Then we visited QL's high school. That was really nice and impressive campus. Then we drove around the concession area, drove QL over to his parents home where he stayed the night and then we drove back (horrible highway with lots of accidents which is not unusual). It was a nice short visit.

Shenzhen

I just got back from a business trip to Shenzhen in Guangdong Province. It is an amazing city that was created with policy changes by the mainland Chinese leaders. It was the first of three Special Economic Zones created by the Chinese leadership back in 1980. The National People's Congress passed "Regulations for The Special Economy Zone of Guangdong Province" and officially designated the Shenzhen Special Economy Zone. The new policy allowed what was a small fishing village to grow to a city of around 14 millions people in such a short time.
Before coming to China I had never even heard of this city and yet it has 14 million people living in it. The city is still building and expanding like most cities in China. It is relatively new and more upscale than other cities. Another benefit is it is next door to Hong Kong. Many residents of Hong Kong have bought property in Shenzhen. There is still a tremendous amount of building construction activity.

Chinese Napping at Work II

Here is the laborer version of sleeping on the job in China. This is a building that is being renovated across the street from our apartment. The laborers are working throughout the night to renovate the inside of the existing building into what we think will be a karaoke club (yippie). These workers are sleeping out under the stars (if you could see the stars) on the roof of the building being renovated. On the other side of the building a breakfast picnic on the roof is taking place. These pictures were taken at 6:30 am.

Building Boom

I have mentioned previously that construction is going on around us everywhere. We see it outside our apartment and next to our work location.

What I find amazing is that new buildings are going up everywhere and not focused in one area. Some of the new buildings are amazing and daring in architecture.

Check out this video: http://videobeijing.com/2006/07/23/big-buildings-of-beijing/

Rural Migrant Construction Workers

Rural migrant workers from the rural areas of China are a big part of the Beijing scene. This is played out all over urban areas in China as well. We see new migrant housing going up all the time near new building work sites. Here is a You Tube video concerning these people that I thought was interesting and wanted to share with you.

http://videobeijing.com/2006/10/31/beijing-construction-workers-life-off-the-clock/

Construction Galore

This city has so many cranes on the horizon. There is building next to our apartment, next to the new office, everywhere you can see. Along with the building are lots of migrant workers who have come in from the rural areas looking for opportunities. So you see all these prefabbed temporary three story dormitories by the job sites to house the workers.