In every place we have visited in China, we have seen old buildings being torn down to be replaced with new construction.When this process began right at the end of our street, we decided to chronicle it. The pictures you see here were taken over a period of almost two years - from summer of 2004 to spring of 2006.

We used to buy eggs from a lady who lived here. But one day we found the window and door bricked up and our egg lady gone. In fact, everyone seemed to be leaving this building.

One of the families from that building moved into some rooms at the end of our courtyard, transporting all their belongings in the bicycle-wagon you see at the right side of this picture. We don't know where our egg lady moved to.

After doors and windows had been removed, and pipes and wiring stripped off, the building came down. All the work was done by hand - by men with picks and sledge hammers. Bricks that were still usable were separated out and stacked along the side of the road.

Once the building was reduced to a pile of rubble, dump trucks and bulldozers were brought in to clear the site. At this point, the local people were apparently allowed to help themselves to anything they found useful. We watched people getting bricks out of the pile, scampering out of the way when the bulldozer came to get a load, then returning to pick out some more bricks once the bulldozer left to empty its load into the waiting dump trucks.

The bricks that had been stacked along the road were now made into a wall around the work site. No more heavy equipment would be involved in the raising of this building. At this point, we lost our sidewalk as it was now behind the wall.

The wall was whitewashed, and slogans were painted on it, encouraging the workers to follow the excellent examples to be found in Chinese history, and build a good building.

This picture gives you an idea of the size of the lot where all this work is going on. Lee watched workers prepare the foundation using an interesting machine consisting of a wheel with a weight on one edge, which was turned by a motor. The weight caused the wheel to turn in an unbalanced manner so it jumped up and down as it went around, and a flat metal plate attached to the mechanism went up and down with it, tamping the ground.

The next step was the construction of a metal framework for the new buildings. Wooden planks were placed across the open spaces in the metal frame so the workers could get around.

The building began to take shape as walls and columns were raised. In the section on the left, you can see the columns clearly. They are metal forms filled with concrete, and are the weight-bearing part of a Chinese building. There are no weight-bearing walls. The walls are built of brick and merely fill the space between the columns.This is representative of Chinese construction from ancient times.

As the buildings got taller, they disappeared behind a green mesh screen. We assume this was for the protection of both the workers high on the walls, as well as the passers-by on the ground below. In southern China, scaffolding around buildings is made of bamboo, but bamboo doesn't grow as far north as Luoyang, so this mesh was attached to a metal scaffolding.

We counted each story as it was added to the building. When ground space is limited, the only way to go is up, so many new buildings in China are very tall. This one, however, only has six stories. In this picture, a worker pushes a wheel barrow across the newly installed roof.

Meanwhile, across the street, various sizes of window frames were stacked up, ready to be installed in the new buildings.

The green mesh came off as the buildings neared completion. The finishing touches were applied to the interiors of the upper floors, which would become apartments, while a bit more work remained to be done on the ground floor area, destined to become shops.

We knew the project was almost done when the temporary brick wall came down, and we got our sidewalk back.

Finally the big day arrived - the grand opening, complete with inflatable arch, inspiring slogans and silk flower arrangements. Now apartments were available for sale and shop areas for rent.

People began to decorate apartments, solar water heaters were added on the roof, and a hairdresser opened the first shop on the ground floor. Meanwhile a sign was put up and electronic equipment installed in the bank on the corner.

On a fine spring day, The China Construction Bank opened its doors, and the project was finished. And while the building behind him is grand and new, the vendor on the corner continues to do business from his cart like he always has.

Lee would often watch the construction project from the upper floors of the Foreign Language Building during breaks in his classes, where he observed many building methods he had never seen before. Though our Chinese friends were a little bemused at our interest in this whole process, the rapid changes that are taking place, and the subsequent mixing of old and new are very much a part of today's China.

Copyright 2006, Dr. Lee Williams

Last Modified: 15 May 2006

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