Chinalbeit

Ah Xi’an – the cradle of Chinese civilization, home of the first emperor, site of the historic Terracotta Warriors, seated at the base of majestic Hua Mountain.  Yeah…I can’t stand it.

For the most part I’ve been pretty lucky in China…well, except for getting deported, requiring 25 stitches in my face thanks to Chinese hospitality, nearly getting my juggular cut by a crazed Chinese female.  OK, actually, I haven’t really been that lucky at all.  I’d still take it over my life back in the States, which though it was quite a bit safer and saner bored me into addictions with online video games and all-night raiding parties.  Never again, I say.  My wonderful trip to the center of Chinese civilization in September of 2008 certainly takes the cake for run bad, however, which is saying something considering its competition.

I wasn’t even supposed to go to Xi’an in the first place.  I had my trip already booked and planned for Guilin / Yangshuo.  I got a dirt cheap flight from Beijing into Guilin: the only problem was that the departure time was 7AM.  No problem, I thought, I can get up early.  I had just bought a brand new phone with alarm function (yeah I’m a little behind the technical curve here, I realize this), so the night before the flight I set it to wake me up at a very early 4:30AM and off I drifted into slumberland.

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Update
It looks like most of my suspicions were confirmed. According to this article there was a lot of suspicious stuff going on.  First of all, the land was purchased by the developer at an extreme discount of only 640RMB per square meter.  Other developers in the area paid over three times that amount for similar developments.  Suspicious connections much?  As well, the developer, which did not have a license, was granted a “temporary license” by the gov’t for the express purpose of joining the public bidding, which the gov’t has confirmed was not truly public.  Color me completely unsurprised

Original Post

As you may or may not have heard, an apartment building (luckily still unoccupied and under construction) in the compound “Lotus Riverside” in Shanghai’s Minhang district fell over in one big piece on Saturday.  Below are some pictures.  You can find some more high resolution photos at EastSouthWestNorth

Toppled Building

Toppled Building

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Giving the blog a test run.  Ignore this nonsense, or deal with horrible nightmares of a dead, naked David Carradine as a consequence.

Not really an asian