Xiamen Is Under Construction!

 I think the hardest thing for me to adjust to in Xiamen is the constant noise of drills, sand blasters, gravel trucks, jig saws or hack saws, jack hammers, and many, many other unidentified but very noisy demolition tools! It seems  everything is being torn down or being rebuilt. This demolition job  spilling into the sidewalk just a block from our apartment is a  new project that wasn't there yesterday!

Our apartment building is just a couple years old, and some of the apartments are being occupied for the first time. Apparently, when you buy a new apartment you just buy the shell, and it's up to you to build the inside the way you want it. So, that's is what's been happening for the last month in the apartment below us. And then there's the apartment above us. We're not sure what they are redoing, but there has been constant drilling and blasting up there for weeks, even though the apartment is occupied.
When we started getting hairline cracks in our walls we notified the owner of our apartment. He came to look, and left quite happy that it wasn't as bad as he had expected! We hear constant noise from 8 in the morning until 6 at night every single day. And some days, I have gone to bed at 10 to the noise of someone's drill. Trying to help Kynza with her homework is a challenge because the noise is really too loud for us to talk over. Her best solution is to put on headphones and listen to music. This video shows what Kynza and I were up against this afternoon while the downstairs neighbors built an overhang for their little patio. I took the video from my bedroom window. Actually, the guy on the ladder is looking straight into our living room.

Here's a shot of the apartment downstairs as I look in through the outside window. They still have a ways to go! We think they actually bought two apartments and blasted out the wall between them. All the concrete floor has come out and they are installing some kind of pipes under the floor.Don't know what comes next.

But it's not just our little building that is blasted by construction noise. Today I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and take pictures of construction, and these are a sampling of what I saw. All of these pictures, except the Starbucks one, were taken within a 10 minute walk of my house. Starbucks is more like a 25 minute walk:)

This sidewalk encounter makes me laugh. It's on my street just beside our apartment building, and I literally almost tripped on this guy as I was walking along not looking down! Not sure exactly what he's doing, but the sidewalks are always and forever being dug up. You'll notice that all the sidewalks in all the pictures are these red, turquoise and yellow squares.

Thought you might enjoy seeing these contraptions that are getting ready for some work. I'm not totally sure what they do! They've been sitting on this sidewalk for a few weeks now. Take a look at the trash receptacles in the picture above. They are everywhere, which is really convenient, but to my American eyes, it looks like one side should say something like "recycle." Both have matching pictures of trash going into a basket.

A few random shots of sidewalks I see on my walk. Pretty much every street has building materials of some sort piled high like this. Doesn't seem to bother the shops. It's just a part of life!
A few blocks farther down the same sidewalk, all the sudden this pipe ground me to a halt! I trapsed out into the street to get around, and on the other side, saw this ditch with the guy's head peeking out. He wasn't too excited about getting his picture taken, so I went on my way, still not quite sure how the pipe and the ditch were going to fit together.

Demolition is also very big. One day you walk by and see a building that looks perfectly fine, the next day you see a bulldozer and only traces of the building. Couldn't resist the picture of these workers who were amused to watch me taking pictures of their master demolition below. Must have been break time!

In the afternoon I was walking to meet Kynza after school and admiring the fact that they had quickly finished the construction of the street that leads to her bus stop. It really makes her daily trek much easier. So why was there this noisy apparatus showering rocks into a truck?  I think it has something to do with tarring the new street, but looked to me like the street was already tarred.

And here is some construction going on close to the beach, on the other side of my house. Can't read the Chinese, so not sure what's going up. To my eye there is more demolition and less construction at the moment, but I'm sure that could change in a couple days. Stuff just happens quickly with no warning.

Welcome to Starbucks in the Jimei district of Xiamen! It's outside an upscale shopping mall, and the Starbucks sidewalk doesn't escape reconstruction! What I find amusing is the people sitting drinking their coffee, taking the noisy, dusty construction in stride! I was here to buy coffee beans. The only place I have found that sells coffee beans or ground coffee! In the stores you can buy Nescafe, and other instant coffee, but no "real" coffee. I guess Starbucks has a corner on the market, so beans run about $30 a pound. I've convinced myself it's a necessity,  not a luxury! Or would going without coffee be a means of reducing my construction anxiety?