There was a hubbub at the entrance to our lane this week.
Apparently you could go up to a desk and talk to someone about how Better City, Better Life (for Expo — see the Haibo?) is coming to you.
In our house, we already knew. The 6:45 am whomp, whomp, whomp of the sledgehammers has been going on steady for several days now.
from our front gate
And it would have been hard to miss the crash when the truck dumped its load of bricks.
As anybody who’s been reading this blog for more than a year knows, at our last lane house, we lived through months of picking our way through stinky trenches while the sewers were replaced. (See The Big Dig and other entries circa November 2008.) What are the odds that we would have the same experience at our new house?
As it turns out, pretty high. This is going on in lanes all over Shanghai now at a frantic pace, readying for Expo’s opening on May 1. Why? As somebody told me when I asked what the desks and signs were all about, “They want to impress the foreigners who are coming to Expo.”
The jackhammers are coming soon, as I’m told they’re going to re-pave the whole lane once they finish with the sewers. Could it be worse?
Yeah, that could be our car parked at the end of the lane. (The owner must have missed the meeting.)
Thanks for the assist! I’m working hard on reading the characters, but still have such a long way to go. Kathy