Sunday, 20 December 2009

Jackhammering by night is now over.

The portion of the construction project for Yanan Road (West) devoted to redoing the street is over! Glory hallelujah! No more jackhammering starting at around 10:00 pm and continuing on into the wee hours.

That's the good news.

The not-so-good news is that the portion of the project devoted to redoing the "sidewalks" has now begun. Work on the street simply had to wait each day until evening and early morning hours because of the huge amount of motorized traffic on Yanan Road (one of the major east-west arteries of the Puxi side of Shanghai). Cars count, you see. Pedestrians and the other traffic (bicycles and motorized cycles of all kinds) using the "sidewalks" don't count, so the construction (whence the jackhammering) can be done during the day, to save money on the work crews. It simply does not matter if this is precisely the time for maximum impact on pedestrians.

I keep putting "sidewalks" inside those scare quotes, because it really doesn't seem like a sidewalk when, at any moment, you can expect to be mowed down — head-on or from behind — by a bicycle on a narrow strip of bricked area about 3-4 feet (0.9-1.2 meters) wide. It seems more like a combat zone. But that is the "normal" condition of these "sidewalks." For now, you can multiply that feeling by at least 1,000. On any given traversal, you may be "cordoned" onto a "walkable" strip of the "sidewalk" about 1 foot (.3 meters) wide. That can be nerve-wracking because you are walking just next to an open ditch about half a person's height deep, and just next to the workers making, or playing in that ditch, some using heavy equipment (shovels if you're lucky, jackhammers if you're not). Passing on that narrow strip is really interesting, especially if either person is carrying anything. Some people, understandably simply give up on the "sidewalk" and walk in the street. Of course, the entire "sidewalk" may simply be blocked off, and then you have to walk in the street, inviting the very audible ire of any car, truck, and bus traffic your thoughtless use of their lane happens to inconvenience. (It doesn't help much to cross the street and walk on the other side. For a start, it can take 5 minutes to do that, if the timing of the lights is against you. And the construction is going on both sides anyhow.)

All of this (and so much more) is all part of the preparations for Shanghai Expo 2010. Opening day is now just a tad over 4 months away — 1 May 2010. An incomprehensible amount of construction and renovation is underway, everywhere in Shanghai, all of which simply must be finished on time. And everyone knows that. So people put up with it. I think they actually take some pride knowing that their putting up with things like this represents an increment of doing their part towards this extremely important civic goal. For the expatriate, here only temporarily, it feels more like Shanghai's way of saying: time to go home!