The construction crane

[The last picture here is of the 700 mountains being leveled. The other photos are just of various construction projects in our neighborhood.]

In 2005, when we were tourists in China, we heard that the construction crane was the Chinese "national bird". We were impressed then and crane numbers have only multiplied since. The construction around Xi’an  verges on the unbelievable. This is a city with a population of 8 million people. We are only acquainted with a small part of it. What we have seen amazes us.

We have seen 6-8 major “Ridgedale type” malls that have opened in the last year or so. In our area of circulation through the city, we are watching construction of perhaps 2 dozen major projects and countless minor ones. Let me try to describe what we see when we are driving by a new project.

Most of the new major projects around here are 15-30 story buildings. No super tall 60-100 stories like the really big cities. Everything seems about the same height.  In Minneapolis a 30 story building is a pretty big deal and most projects in Minneapolis of 30 stories would be one building. Definitely not here.

The typical new project seem to be 8-15 buildings of 15-30 stories. Most of the projects are anchored by a new multi-story high end mall built at their base (including lots of restaurants and lots of high end western brand stores). (You cannot have all those people moving in to live and work there without shops, restaurants, entertainment, etc.) When a developer starts to build, he really starts to build. The first building to open in the development seems to be the bank that is financing the project. It will provide financing to buy all the apartments (we would call them condos), and functions as a sales office as well.

When we talk about 8-15 buildings, we don’t mean build one, finish it, start another, finish it, start another. When a development starts here, acres of old buildings are torn down, and all the new buildings start rising at the same time. Suddenly you have all these buildings rising up with their cranes sitting on top as they deliver all the construction materials.

In our little corner of Xi’an all these major projects, and countless "minor" ones of just a few buildings, amaze us.

Here are a couple of interesting related articles. The first is about Samsung starting to build a $7 billion factory in Xi'an. They are working with our university to specifically train engineering students for Samsung's needs. When is the last time a new company moved to Minneapolis and spent $7 billion? And this is going on all over China. http://www.china.org.cn/business/2012-09/13/content_26512600.htm

The other article is about China building new cities. It is obviously fraught with problems. China projects having 220 cities of over a million inhabitants within 12 years. That compares with 35 cities of that size in Europe  This particular article talks about a developer being hired by the government to level 700 low-level mountains to create a flat, buildable city footprint. China. Amazing.

Hard to put your head around what you need to do with a population of 1.4 billion, growing by 40 million a year, and still trying to get hundreds of millions out of poverty.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/02/02/china-mountain-flattening/1881505/