a lesson in construction

workers dormitories

The most peaceful place I have discovered in Shanghai so far has not been the park near ECNU, but a construction site that you can see from above if you look out the window from the top floor of the academic building on campus. A friend and I went to this construction site last Friday as the sun was going down, and I must tell you, it is like being in a completely different world. Behind the white concrete walls that try to keep people out is a jungle of wire, metal, rust and wood. And the strangest thing is that you can't hear any of the traffic that you know is flowing adjacent to the site. It is a nature of its own kind.

Migrant construction workers live in what some call "prefabricated" dorms on the sites. Most are made of metal sheets, and they are reminiscent of trailer homes. The construction site is eerily beautiful at sundown, but it's difficult to imagine what it would be like to live there day after day, waking up to an continuously changing landscape and an ever-growing tangle of scrap metal and garbage. I try to imagine what it would be like to look out from a worker's dormitory and see the highrises lit up in any color you can think of; a bunch of artificial rainbows that light up the night. And then I realize that where I live is just as much a part of Shanghai's skyline as the buildings you see on the postcards. But where I live is hidden behind a concrete wall and a garbage jungle, and where I live is temporary. And it is on these temporary habitats upon which skyscrapers are built.