We all know China is going through a huge growth spurt. As with humans there are growing pains. In Jinan, like other cities, land for development is scarce.

One of the answers is to demolish older buildings to make room for the new. All through the city there are older multistorey buildings being demolished. The BLF would have apoplexy in the building trade here. Many workers reside on site. They live in large ex military tents. These are heavily insulated against the cold. They have the advantage that as the site is demolished so they can move across the site.

The only method I have seen for demolition is by large front end loaders. Initially they use heavy jackhammer heads to break a part of the building down. The next phase is for the bucket to pick up the large chunks of masonry and then drop them on other chunks. Eventually the building ends up as just a pile of small fist size lumps.

I am not sure if the debris is used as aggregate in new buildings like in OZ. Certainly as much metal as possible is salvaged, sorted and then sent off to be recycled. To ensure that there is no down time with the machinery, this is done while they break down the chunks. Men rush into each dropped bucket load. They gather what materials they can. These are then thrown onto the correct pile. About once a week a truck comes and carts away the collected material. To expedite this each building site seems to have its own weighbridge.

This was once an old three storey apartment block. notice the metal collectors.

I did not see one worker wearing a hard hat. Some wore hi-visibility tops, most did not. Each site has a token steel fence around it. This is often demolished along with the shop fronts. The system is fairly efficient as approximately a quarter of a city block has been demolished using this method since I have arrived.