Building down...

When we first moved here, lo those many months ago, one of the things that we were amazed at was the amount of construction that is going on everywhere in China. There are giant condos going up everywhere across this island, along with lots of work on the city's infrastructure.

One of the first things that you notice when watching them build here is that they don't build upwards the way we would, they start and the top and build down. Yep, it does seem strange.

You watch these buildings go up, first just as a shell of concrete, and then you'll see the walls being bricked in at the top of the building. From there they surround the walls with scaffolding and work on finishing the outside facade of the building. But they work on maybe 5 floors at a time, from the top floor down.

It's interesting as you'll watch the walls below the scaffolding being bricked in, and then one day you pass by and the scaffolding has all been moved down to the next section.

This is just one of those little things that struck us as odd when we first got here, and now you don't notice or even think about. I probably would now be surprised now to see a building being built up, such is the quantity of buildings being built here that you now just take it for granted that this is what everyone does....

The picture of the condos above was taken a few weeks after we moved into our apartment. They have finished building down to the ground now, but the outer construction walls are still up. We figure that they will be open for people to begin moving in this spring, and then if our place is any sort of indicator, it will not reach above 20% occupancy for the first two, maybe three, years.