WRT the construction; there is some rebar used, but probably not as much as should have been -- graft is endemic in all societies.
In this photo distributed by the official
Xinhua news agency, rescuers search for
students at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan
Township of Dujiangyan City, about 100 kilo-
meters from the epicenter in Wenchuan county
of southwest China's Sichuan Province, on
Monday May 12, 2008.
(AP Photo/Xinhua, Jiang Yi)
Well, 'brit/yank,' funny you should mention Texas & Oklahoma.
Because THAT is exactly my point and exactly one of the primary things that differentiates heartland America and central 'redneck' areas of Britain from China and Burma and such.
In these 'isolated rural' areas of our western world, every farm/ranch has at least one backhoe, skid-steer or at least tractor with a hay-bale front-loader for lifting/moving 'stuff.'
I've spent enough time in China to see this dramatic difference, and the picture of 30 chinese workers manhandling something that a single American farmer could rig up with a chain and save his neighbor in minutes, well, that's why I remark on that picture.
It jibes with what I have experienced in China, and how I LIVE in Texas.
Frankly, as an anglo-Texan, I'm pretty pissed off at your snide comment equating British construction with what's going on over there in Sichuan schools.
If you had any experience with the difference between Singapore's society and Hong Kong's society and ethics, molded heavily by English culture, and compared it to remnants of what Chinese culture and society remains to this day in the backwater interior of China, you'd check yourself on such denigration of your own heritage; and frankly, if the British had ventured on in with the Opium back then and 'taken' more land, there'd be fewer dead children in Sichuan today. Bank it.
I think western society should expect more respect, even from a yankee. =)