One Thousand Years of Moving Stones

There getting a lot of work done on the huge new library that is basically going to be the center piece of the school. It looks like it will be at least five stories bigger then the next tallest building on campus and given it's central location almost all of the roads on campus run either to or from it. In fact even the little canal which runs through campus is being diverted to better accentuate the building. One of the buildings I teach in is basically next to the library, though its actually a little distance from it, and has a road that leads right to it. The only problem is that while at some points that road is about three lanes wide by the time it get near the library it's tiny only about one lane. So they decided to widen it before they finish the library.

The only problem is that this extension runs right through one side of a little pond they have on campus. So starting about a week ago they took out all the trees lining the pond then drained the water out so that they could build some of it back up and extend the road. It looks like the first thing they are doing is building a wall made of stones and mud and what I hope is some concrete in the middle of the pond so that they can fill some of it in and build the road on a solid foundation. This all sounds pretty normal, and it is, except for the way they are building it. In America they would have brought in cranes and bulldozers and jackhammer and whatever else, here they build this road the same way they've probably been building it for more then a thousand years, with man power. I To put these stones in place in the bottom of the drained pond two guys attach a rope around one of the stones, which must way more then 100 pounds, and the ropes attach to a big piece of bamboo which is then hoisted on the shoulders of two men who carry it to its place in the dry pond. In less then a week they managed to build a wall about 80 feet long and about 10 feet high using not one visible piece of machinery.

For all the changes people say have come and are coming to China there are still people in one of its most central industrial cities who build walls in the same way that there ancient ancestors where probably building walls. It usually seems that everything today is different and that even a farmer of 50 years ago would barley recognize the modern implements of his trade there are still people moving rocks in the oldest way in the world, by carrying them. In one sense it has this great feeling of tradition that if it ain't broke don't fix it. In another it just proves how cheap labor here is that it's much cheaper to have a ton of people moves rocks by hand then have a machine do it for them. But in another sense anyone who thinks that the time of China's ascension is at hand, anyone who thinks that in the next 50 years China will supplant America as the worlds hegemonic power should come to Changzhou and see people moving rocks the same way they did a thousand years ago.