Shanghai Parks

Shanghai has lots and lots of parks, from small little niches to huge areas,  here is one I stumbled across the other day:

Very nice.

EXPO

I didn't see much of the Expo when I went.  (The Chinese pronounce each letter individually E X P O) I am not a big fan of waiting in line, so after waiting in three separate lines just to get in the gate I was done.  I haven't given up on it, but I will wait a bit.

One thing that did catch my eye was the fence around the place:

It doesn't show up as well in the pictures, but not only is it a double fence, but one is topped with concertina and the other electrified.  That is a serious fence, serious as in prison fence.

Urban Agriculture

Lately I have been taking walks at lunchtime thru the area out side the ZPMC gate we call "the village".  Now Changxing Doa is mainly an agricultural island, just not really in the area around ZPMC.  But that doesn't stop the people who live in the village from doing a bit of farming:

That canal is just over a mile long and almost all of it is partitioned into these small family plots.

Very Chinese to try and make the most out of every bit of space.

One note, that water is not a nice green.

A Sea of Holes

With all the talk of welding you might forget about all the bolts that go into building our little piece of the bridge.  Well no one has actually sat down to calculate it, but there are hundreds of thousands of bolts going into this project.  Which translates into a sea of bolt holes. For example:

and

and the really interesting fact?  Every single one of them is drilled by hand.

Chinese Welders

Now the Chinese have taken quite a lot of lack for the delays in the bridge due to welding issues.  And the deserve some of it, but since I like to play Devil's advocate, here are a few frames to put things into perspective:

Now here is a fairly common scene, three guy s watching, one woman working.  All the inspectors here agree that the women are much better welders.  Which is a statement given the nature of this group.

The next two pictures are more "day in the life" kind of things, until you realize they do this 12 hours a day.

Grinding, lots of grinding.

Cutting, a lot of that too.

Now it gets a bit more serious:

These two folks (one male, one female) are inside the confined space of a tower shaft during Vertical Trial Assembly.  Poor ventilation, poor lighting, and sparks flying everywhere.  Not fun.  Did I mention 12 hours a day?

And it gets better.  The next two photos are of two welders working on the East Line grillage.  The grillage is a super-critical part of the cable system that supports and aligns the cable as it turns under the bridge into the east end anchor.

Yes, they are arc welding.  In a narrow gap between heavy metal plates.  Oh, and I did mention preheating...  those 100mm plates they are squeezed between have been heated to 160C (320F).  There have been issues, but this is not easy work, it takes skill and stamina.

One last detail.  Now I have no way to verify this, but it is my understanding that the average welder at ZPMC gets paid room, board, and 60RMB per day.  Workers on this project get a premium 80RMB per day..  80RMB is $12.30, per day.

Got to love China...

Okay, this is a cut and paste from the Shanghai IKEA webpage:

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Friendly Remind!

To secure the safety of residents and the domestic/oversea visitors during Expo session, Shanghai Public Security Bureau and the Municipal Commerce Committee jointly made the decision on special safety management of cutlery. According to the safety management, hazardous tools of knives must be purchased on registration of customer’s real names. “Knives for kitchen use must be sold at specific shops and be purchased on registration of customers’ ID card.”

On sales of knives, customers’ ID card shall be checked and the related personal information, types of the purchased items and quantity be registered. Sale report be submitted to on a weekly basis, and recorded at local Public Security Bureau.

More detail please consult SALES co-worker. Thank you for your cooperate!

 

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Yes, it is true, you have to register to buy a paring knife in Shanghai. 

"Wet" Markets

Wet Markets are where most Chinese go to get their groceries.  In essence they are full time enclosed farmers markets and you can find a wide selection of fresh food.

Fresh Veggies (field ripened!):

Fresh Meat:

Very Fresh....

and live seafood:

All at prices that are so low it is hard to believe.  I got a whole roast duck, not a large duck, but enough, for 14 Yaun.  That is $2.00.  It was delicious!

Bridge Parts Part-01

Since I am here working on the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, I thought I would post a few pictures of what we are up too.  The project here is really two projects, one building the Tower and the other building the Deck.  The Deck referred to as the OBG (Orthogonal Box Girder) a reference to its structural design

Lets begin with the Tower.  the full tower is 500' high.  Here re lifts One and Two in vertical trial assembly:

Now it is really hard to get the perspective on this thing, but the portion you are looking at is 200 meters beyond the crane we are looking thru, and is 270' tall.  We surveyed the top of that tower, from the bottom to +/- 1 millimeter.  Fun.

If the folks at ZMPC are good at anything it is lifting large, awkward, heavy things.  This is a segment of the west shaft of the tower being moved around the factory floor:

The other part of this project, OBG, is also a massive undertaking.  Here is a shot of one of the fabrication yards (taken from a platform 25 meters in the air):

That little shape on the right hand side is a man on an ebike.  Here is a shot of the OBG Trial assembly from the other side of the platform:

You can see some man sized specks in that one too.  Oh, and about lifting heavy things?  Here is a picture of one of the OBG asssemblies being loaded on the ship for shipment Two:

Yes, that is a 4000 Metric ton crane, 4,000,000 Kilos, 8,800,000 lbs.  I did say HEAVY things.

A different word view

The Chinese see the world differently.  They just do.  For instance, this label seems to make sense to them:

Well I know there is something on this ebike I should worry about, just not sure what.