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May 21, 2018

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Another brick in the wall of springtime

Source: Shanghai Daily | 00:01 UTC+8 May 21, 2018 | Print Edition

As of writing this, there is a battalion of hammers and an occasional jackhammer pounding from the apartment upstairs. It usually starts around 8am, stops for a lunch break, and then begins in earnest until whenever the workers deem it done for the day. “Of all the apartments, they had to drill on top of mine,” I can’t help but think.

This isn’t anything new for me, though. About the same time last year, when my roommate and I had just one month left on our old apartment lease, we watched in awe as construction workers outside our window decimated surrounding buildings, walls, windows, and anything that seemed worth destroying. We looked on as they smacked rubber-handled sledgehammers against brick walls, while wearing cloth shoes, and cringed as a room a couple floors up drilled full speed into the flooring. Only a couple of months after we moved out, our road was shredded to bits to make way for the new subway line — something that proved to us that we had moved out at the right time.

Spring must be the time of year for redecorating, if that’s the right term for the calculated demolition that seems to follow us wherever we go. Whereas springtime generally heralds in wildlife and budding flowers, at least in Hangzhou it’s still a time of the “crane” as building cranes decorate the skylines and people think about doing some spring cleaning, or high-octane “redecorating” — jackhammers and all. Perhaps songs about the spring could be rewritten to include the sound of hammers alongside the chirping birds. “Ah, spring!” I can imagine someone proclaiming. “What a time to fix a drywall!”

This of course didn’t escape my dad’s attention while he visited me in April, especially given that he works in an American construction company. I asked him to count how many cranes he saw. He didn’t bother, because there were just too many. I told him to keep an eye out for bamboo scaffolding — something very different from scaffolding in the US. He saw it within no time and said, “Well, bamboo is pretty strong, so that makes sense.” I led him through the construction site right outside of our hotel, past the bulldozers, and over the fresh asphalt. “I’m sorry about this!” I said, not without some small glee that he could experience this part of everyday China. “No biggie,” he said. “I’m used to it.”

Was I hoping for a more exaggerated response to all of the whirling construction madness in China? Naturally. My dad is a very calm person by nature, but I had hoped for a “wow!” or a “that’s so crazy!” as he took it all in. Wouldn’t he think it insane that welding took place on the sidewalks and that steamrollers could just scoot on down the street like nothing was happening?

He certainly noticed it, but it didn’t shock him as much as the twisted part of me wanted it to. Instead, he marveled at what was being built and how, whereas I was still caught that change was happening in the first place.

A photographer in a Times article about construction efforts called “Lost in Transition: the Shifting Landscape of Western China” said, “It’s almost like you’re in this nowhere place, this place where everything is in suspension, and you’re lost in this constant transition.” This is often how I feel living in Hangzhou, where in five years the skyline can change pretty dramatically, and what I knew even a couple years ago has already been replaced by something else. Every spring, something around me will be updated, and while change is exciting, it can also be tiring. Because when spring and its incessant jackhammers arrive, it also means that I have to start thinking about my own transitions, and where I fall in this “nowhere place.” Forget a five-year plan. Where will I be six months from now? Will I even recognize it when I get there?

Spring in Hangzhou, while beautiful, is a constant reminder that China’s always on the move, and that it would be wise for those living here to be ready to move, too. I’ve mentioned before that when I first moved to Hangzhou, the subway hadn’t been built at all; now I take it all the time. Restaurants and shops constantly go up and down around me, and while it may be frustrating at times, it’s also exciting to see what will come next. That’s what a world of constant transition looks like: There is always something coming next. Building cranes aren’t just there to join the skyline; they are there to make something that wasn’t there before, just as change happens when something fits better than what used to be there in the first place.

So it is with this in mind that I sit in my apartment, shaking my fist at the neighbors upstairs and their hammers, while also wondering what will be there that wasn’t there before. Are they redoing the floors? Rearranging furniture? Tearing down everything and starting from scratch?

A part of me hopes that it’s the latter, that after all of this noise and effort, they are trying something entirely new. After all, if they can tear apart their place and start over, then what’s to say that I can’t do the same in my own life?

Ah, spring! Not just a time for drywall, but to be reborn!

Hangzhou


 

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