A Chinese friend of ours recently joked about the way that Brits sometimes mispronounce the name of this country as “Chinar.” He remarked that their accent actually contains a hidden truth. By combining the two Chinese words “Chāi” (拆 – to destroy) and “Nǎ’er” (哪儿 – where?), it describes the reality of the rapid pace of modernization, leaving us wondering about what will be torn down next.
One of our past posts (“There Goes the Neighborhood”) lamented the fact that our nearby market was slated for destruction. Just in case you were wondering about how the Chinese destroy a block of buildings, here is a series of photos to satisfy your curiosity.
Step 1: Add a few stories onto the old apartment buildings. While this seems strange before demolition, many landlords will quickly expand if they believe the neighborhood will soon be destroyed, expecting greater compensation for a larger building:
Step 2. Remove the windows, doors, and water tanks/heaters for re-use:
Step 3. Start knocking down the buildings. Quite a large crowd was watching when this one fell down:
As the dust cleared, we saw these boys who may have been standing closer than the OSHA limit:
The buildings are taken down one-by-one using large jackhammers (click jackhammering to watch video):
You can see our apartment complex in the background of the photo above (yellow and white buildings).
Destruction and normal life attempt to coexist during the process. The vegetable sellers from our market will probably stay here until the last buildings fall down (see the rubble in the background):
Step 4. Harvest the rebar. Since most apartments in China are made of concrete and brick, there is a lot of valuable rebar to recover. The first crew uses cutting torches and tools to get the big stuff:
The next crew spends most of the day swinging sledgehammers and picking through the chunks of rock:
The rebar is sorted, piled up, and loaded onto a truck for re-use:
Step 5. Scoop up the rubble and haul it away:
Step 6. Sweep up the dust and spread it around:
This final step often shows up on our porch:
Perhaps next year, we’ll be able to look through this door of destruction to a new, living community:
Loved the last comment most of all—living community indeed. Thinking about you often. Thanks for this.
well, I know how hard you both worked to capture all of the different stages of the ChaiNar process…
Good job summing it up! 🙂 What an interesting progression, and it probably would be much more interesting to me, had I not just spent the last month and a half living in it!