It's bloody cold... and more walking

Last week flew by like a dove on speed, with a hawk chasing it. And they're both inside a plane. I'm all about great analogies.

So I think I've spoken before about the amount of building going on in Huizhou, if not directly then at least through my pictures from last week. I'm not sure that I fully conveyed the sheer scale of it, largely because there's no way I fully appreciated the sheer scale of it. I went for two more walks this weekend, which by my calculations (5Km/h avg walking speed, 8 hours total walking time) should have covered a little more than 40Km between them. Ooh, this brings me to something, a quick digression from the building...

Cartography. Now as far as I know, the Greeks invented cartography, but the Chinese were not far behind. Somewhere along the line though, these guys lost the plot. See, I've got a map of Huizhou, which shows that the place I stay is more or less in the centre of the city. Last week, I walked north for about 2 hours, and was nowhere near the edge. This weekend, on both of my walks (south east on Monday, and westish on Tuesday), I was in "countryside" within 90 minutes. Phft.

Back to building. You truly cannot believe the sheer volume of building that is going on. Around every corner, there are buildings going up that would dwarf pretty much anything in Jozi. And I'm not exaggerating. The building I live in is 31 stories high, and is probably just about in the ten tallest buildings that I can see from here. The real size though comes in in the wealthy areas, where there is also more new building going on. I did a little test - Every now and then, on my walk, I would try and find a place I could stand where I couldn't see any construction going on. It's just not possible. Words fail me.

Then there is West Lake. A large part of Huizhou is built around West Lake and South Lake, which are actually two parts of one lake, separated by a walking bridge.

I'm not sure what they are doing at West Lake, but about three weeks ago, they blocked off the ends, and drained the lake. They now have a bunch of diggers and bulldozers in there, and doing stuff.

But now, there's a problem. I see these massive constructions going on, and they are mindblowing in their complexity and size (for my non engineering mind). Then, right next door to the school, they have just built a wall to front a new bar, which is mindblowing in the lack of any sort of thought that's gone into it.

I need to explain this properly, so please bear with me. I'm not an engineer, nor a builder, so I may speaking out of turn here, but my understanding of a wall is that it has to have something to hold it up. Such as pillars that are thicker, or being attached to another wall at an angle, or something. If you just pile bricks, one on top of the other, they are really a pile, and will eventually fall over, no? But that's what they've done - there was a shop next to us with a glass front. In front of this glass front (so right at the edge of the... granite... step, they began a wall, which is one brick deep at any point, and is attached to... nothing. There aren't even poles going into the old wall to hold the new one up. And no, it doesn't reach a roof of any sort to attach to either.

We've all taken to walking into the road to pass it, but there's a tacit understanding that when they open the bar they're building there, we're going to get a guy to lean against it from the inside, just for a lark.