This title may evoke a zen-like peaceful feeling, but it describes the opposite. It has to do with the frenetic pace of building in the cities of China. I just returned from a 9 day visit to Beijing and Shanghai with the New Haven Chamber of Commerce. As a real estate agent, I was astonished by the size and continued growth of the cities, the need for housing and China's approach to the problem. Look in any direction and you are going to see not one, but dozens of construction cranes builiding new office and apartment towers. Beijing is building new housing projects the size of cities in Connecticut. In Shanghai, there are over 5000 buildings 30 stories or higher. All this to accomodate a population of 22 million.

Our group was treated to a "snapshot" of China. I say snapshot, because if we return in a few years, the places we saw will probably be unrecognizable. They will have been swallowed by new, even bigger, construction. This is an economy on steroids.

Why do I write about this? Because what is going on in China is going to affect our lives and our livelihoods. China is gobbling up the world's resources for all this development, just as the United States did when it had its own industrial revolution and growth spurt. To see China today is to look at the rebirth of a nation. It is also a glimpse back to what it must have been like to see the U. S. a century ago. China now consumes 48% of the world's steel. (Mortished, Times Online 10/13/09) and almost an equal percentage of the world's cement. What I witnessed was limited to the constuction in the cities. Most of the construction is industrial, so we can only imagine what that looks like. China also has a lot of cash. It can pay whatever it takes to acquire the raw materials it needs.

There is opportunity here. The world comes to China to manufacture, because the Chinese can make anything. We visited silk, pearl and jade factories, and saw the remarkable skills of the weavers and carvers. The world also visits to learn about an exciting culture. The juxtapostion of ancient and modern is quite striking. My photo of an Buddhist temple shows cell phone towers in the distance. In the middle of modern Beijing we visited herbalists whose collective experince goes back thousands of years. Then there is the art and design - there is such beauty in the decorative arts and gardens.

As enjoyable as the trip was, we were happy to return home. When you travel abroad, you return with an added appreciation of the life we have here. The Chinese pay a steep price for all this development. The air is toxic in the cities. Most of us returned with respiratory ailments. When we first landed in Beijing, we saw what looked like a pea-soup fog. It was smog. The local paper in the hotel had an article about people dying of black lung disease, and they are not miners. On a real estate note: the government owns all the land. It will allow you use for 70 years. This may explain why the Chinese are buying up real estate in Hawaii, California and Vancouver. Despite this, young people want to own their own apartments for the freedom and extra space it offers them. 70 years for them seems a long way off. The weather is doing some funny things in China. On the morning of our flight to Shanghai, it snowed. Later we learned tht the government had seeded the clouds hoping for rain. The unforeseen consequence was a snow storm that eventually closed the airport. We got out just in time, but the second half of our group spent 7 hours on the tarmac before their flight was cancelled. Their experience may not be as joyful as mine. Hope you get to visit China someday. It is well worth the trip.