rogerluli

In closely related news Chinese have begun to wonder why their lives are worth so little in China and so much more outside of it... http://www.chinasmack.com/pictures/value-o...-korea-america/

It was evidently being prepared for demolition...It seems that safety measures were completely absent...City government reports 4 deaths...Netizen comments are quite interesting... "Speechess, blowing up one half, leaving on half, and since there were no danger warning signs, also no traffic police management, it was clearly waiting for a dangerous collapse! MLGBD, a bunch of people who only know how to eat other¡¯s food and not do anything meaningful, all TMD with pig brains! City construction in their eyes is just a trivial thing. If they want to demolish something they demolish something. If they want to build, they build. In my hometown, there was a road lined with trees and flowers, but then they chopped all the trees, pulled up on the grass, and completely TMD paved it with bricks! Why? Because the deputy mayor in charge of urban construction¡¯s brother-in-law makes and sells bricks!!!" "Comrades, please calm down¡­according to the latest report, no one from the Zhuzhou City committee, party, government, military, or various leadership and their wives were hurt from this accident. Those who died were only a few ordinary commoners, so there is no need to make a big deal over this engineering accident. It will disappear within a month from the public¡¯s field of vision;" http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/elevated...unan-collapses/

well sure but that's what makes it so cool...And then you have to watch it several times to pick up more...

http://www.stupidvideos.com/video/just_pla...Eurasia/#240533

We think it's a very pleasant small city Rob...Although being on the "typhoon coast" sometimes it does rain... http://i44.tinypic.com/32zmlb9.jpg

Someone PMed me to ask if by any chance I had noticed the red pipe running along the front of our terrace... Actually I had not only noticed it but also realized it was there on both sunny and cloudy days... http://i40.tinypic.com/4grwx.jpg http://i41.tinypic.com/2qlahy1.jpg And this is a perfect example of the olde adage..."beggars can't be choosers"... You see it's a kind of buy 3 get 1 free deal... When you spring for the 189 m2 house they throw in free of charge the 60+ m2 terrace as a bonus...AND they throw in their water pipe right across the whole shebang...But it really isn't so bad since we need to raise the floor there anyway with some kind of decking so we'll just go over the top of their pipe... PS...Boy you guys really need a few hundred more smilies like we have over next door...

Of course even easier than having walls knocked down AFTER the place is built is to get it all done by the builder to start with...That's just what we were able to do with our new place in Qionghai, Hainan since the building had not even been begun when we bought our apartment... Here is the original plan... http://i39.tinypic.com/2numzkl.jpg Here I had indicated with the "X"s what walls I did not want...It's a win-win for us and the builder by saving them the time and materials to build extra walls and for us to have them torn down later... http://i39.tinypic.com/o6zkmh.jpg And they built it exactly as I wanted...A much better arrangement for the dining room than being crammed in next to the stairway...A huge master upstairs rather than the bedroom we didn't need...Later I'll be blowing out the living room front wall and sliders and doing all windows across the porch to incorporate that space into the living room since we don't need an open porch there with the open terrace upstairs...And also combining the two bathrooms on the lower floor into one and adding a walk-in closet with some of that space...So from a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom we're down to a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom which suits our needs much better... http://i39.tinypic.com/2wedz08.jpg

Well of course the expat needs a place to hang his hat in China. Buying, finishing and furnishing your own space can be loads of fun... "A traditional Chinese building is not constructed of heavily walled rooms like traditional Western buildings. It consists, rather, of heavily timbered sections of framework joined one to another, from which lightly constructed walls are hung." Footnote in "Six Records of a Floating Life" by Shen Fu, 1809... Well amazingly enough even though today's Chinese residential buildings are concrete monoliths the building principles that we think of as post and beam are still used. Here are 2 pics from our Yuxi, Yunnan apartment clearly showing the posts and beams. Other than those structural elements, and the outside walls, you are free to knock down, move and transform your interior space as you wish. Here in the living room view you can see a small wall that projects out about 2' near the front on each side...Those are so gone, all they do is cut down the amount of light and the view from the living room. In the bedrooms we are eliminating one small bedroom and adding it onto the master to give us a larger space, a sitting area in front of a large window and a walk-in closet...About the only interior spaces you can't change very much are bathrooms. They are constructed with a deep pan floor and all the piping stubbed in so everything can be arranged as you wish. It wouldn't be possible to expand that space without taking out part of the ceiling in the floor below you... http://i39.tinypic.com/2gubmup.jpg http://i44.tinypic.com/29kxpuv.jpg

You mean we're all just flogging around in the dark??? Oh well...

Don, like a Boy Scout leading an older gentleman across the street, let me try to help you out... Jason's somewhat oblique reference was to the original thread on this topic, begun by that long time troublemaker, myself... B) In that thread, oh here it is BTW... http://candleforlove.com/forums/index.php?...c=34864&hl= This whole issue was hashed out at length... B) at that time and just when the party was really getting going an interesting mod tag team technique was used to close it... So you see Jason was just trying to save us all the time and trouble of having to revisit everyone's earlier opinions on the topic which no doubt have not changed one iota since the earlier rendition...Have a nice day...

Sorta like laughing at them, rather than with them? If cultural awareness and education were a destination, you could get directions..... Under the new rules of zero tolerance...Isn't this a personal attack???

Excellent reason to move to China...

Pics laopo took in Yuxi, Yunnan 2 months ago... http://i40.tinypic.com/28uqu06.jpg Front of our building...Our apartment is the top left...52 apartments visble here and 2 AC units... http://i44.tinypic.com/2la3qrd.jpg View from the living room windows toward the SE... http://i40.tinypic.com/2vc8b5y.jpg Common seeing these "bongs" for smoking cigarettes... http://i40.tinypic.com/2v2xld3.jpg A beautiful tea store...Yuxi is a small but rich city owing to the presence of the Hongta Group with the largest cigarette factory in asia... http://i42.tinypic.com/290u49d.jpg Dinner...18 RMB...Although the stores and restaurants are universally very nice, prices in Yuxi are low compared to most of China...

These are Chinese people talking about freedom basically to establish a second party Why assume anything? Indeed Randy...Why do some assume that Chinese people have no interest in having the freedom to choose for themselves??? Or the freedom to have basic human rights???

As was well documented in my original thread on this topic Charter08 is a purely Chinese undertaking...westerners are NOT involved...

Pics laopo took at Sanya, Hainan 2 months ago...In 2010 the new high speed rail line will be completed down the east coast of Hainan...In Qionghai we will then be 15 minutes away from Haikou and less than an hour to Sanya... http://i44.tinypic.com/14cxrw6.jpg busy beach in the morning... http://i43.tinypic.com/v75anp.jpg herself... http://i40.tinypic.com/nl1v1d.jpg fruit sellers... http://i42.tinypic.com/295x2rb.jpg the guava girl and the watermelon man... http://i43.tinypic.com/2v1kh2d.jpg sunset...

Well laopo finally did return from the homeland with my first look at our new place in Qionghai, Hainan...This is the one that is the 11th and 12th floors of the building...189 m2 plus a 64 m2 rooftop terrace... Our building at the end of the development...Earlier ones were 7 stories without lifts...(spending too much time on British expat sites) http://i44.tinypic.com/2efud1f.jpg A SW view from the 11th floor living room porch... http://i42.tinypic.com/30kro0k.jpg A NE view from the 12th floor back porch... http://i44.tinypic.com/71gzo6.jpg The Master (12th floor) bedroom cathedral ceiling... http://i39.tinypic.com/eplwz.jpg The terrace looking straight south from the doorway... http://i43.tinypic.com/2laemj7.jpg

Even smaller...Our other place is in Qionghai, Hainan...

Not a bad choice, but why not Kuching in Sarawak??? B)

B)

Yes there are others here planning that...You'll have to search them out...How long do you have to spend in the US every year??? I have heard anywhere from 2 months to 6... As others will tell you US permanent residency is granted for the purpose of LIVING IN AMERICA... B)

That does seem doable...But there is always the chance that through unforseen circumstances...theft, injury, a search of your person for whatever reason...An offical in China could discover that you have US and Chinese passports...Perhaps a small chance but nonetheless it exists...

Glad that's the one...I had it in my pics but I still don't know where I got it from...But must be from Thailand...

Is this it Mike??? http://i43.tinypic.com/343sw83.jpg I would say this is defnitely a Thai style house...probably Phuket...

Bill, I was a builder/renovator and not having seen anything but photos of our home, I would have no clue of what to tell you. Our home is finished/"finished" now so I can't see the rough in stuff. Quite honestly ....I don't think I want to know what the rough in looked like, it gives me shivers, and it's probably one of those situations where what you don't see doesn't give you any nightmares. There's a slight possibility I'll be heading over to Shenyang later this month to marry and christen the new home with the lil' rabbit...I'll let ya know if we flood out the neighbors below us. Godd luck with the new home. tsap seui There are services that do the inspection for you...One trick I saw on Chinese TV was to take a ball bearing and make sure everything slopes the way it should...I guess a level would also come in handy to give you that info...I suspect that once you do sign off...Then it's yours baby...Forget going to court to sue anybody...