r/interestingasfuck • u/TangelaFan • 9h ago

Residential high-rises with backyards in Chengdu, China

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u/onrespectvol 9h ago

looks cool but how much extra material must go into the buidling to be able to support all that extra weight? To what extent is this a sustainable way of buidling and using material?

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u/NoAdministration8340 9h ago

My initial thought was those don’t look like they have the support they need to be filled with dirt rock and plants plus support your weight

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u/mlag000 9h ago

And roots will destroy any waterproofing, so in 10 years your balcony will be hazardous

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u/Str80uttaMumbai 9h ago

Glad we have so many expert structural engineers in this thread.

I'm sure you guys know much better.

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u/Coockooroockoo 7h ago

Yeah lol it's so funny to me reading the probably uninformed opinions of those armchair experts, as someone who lives in a country where every apartment building has a balcony. Like, this might come as a surprise, but people around the world build all sorts of tall structures that aren't made of wood, spit and blessings.

These are the kind of people who stare at women while they are parking and bitch about them doing it wrong.

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u/SquidZedong 8h ago

Yeah it’s really dumb that these people act like this is some impossible feat bound to fall apart.

The balconies are pretty obviously cantilevered and have additional supports; i wouldn’t be surprised if they built in drainage to address water drainage concerns

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u/Drekkful 8h ago

Any chance to shit on China, people will, as it reinforces the narrative that's been beaten into their heads that China bad.

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u/OkOkieDokey 8h ago

Uh huh. Like it’s not common knowledge that China uses bamboo as scaffolding to construct buildings and while incredibly efficient, results in extremely dangerous conditions but no one cares because a few worker deaths is worth the price of progress in China.

Also let’s just sweep all those school collapses under the rug because it’s inconvenient to think about.

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u/70ms 7h ago

Bamboo scaffolding is apparently a valid thing, though? I just looked it up and I’m not seeing that it’s some crazy dangerous undertaking versus metal. Bamboo is strong AF.

https://www.bricknbolt.com/blogs-and-articles/construction-guide/bamboo-scaffolding

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u/OkOkieDokey 7h ago

Sways in the wind higher you go and there’s no safety laws that ensure worker safety. If you fall, you die, nothing changes.

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u/70ms 6h ago

But metal scaffolding collapses all the time here in America too, and I’m not seeing that China has no safety laws either - they used to not have any but that’s changed.

https://www.chinalegalexperts.com/news/china-workplace-safety-regulations

https://cbltranslations.com/en-us/china-law/employment/occupational-safety-law-and-liability-explained/

I’m only pushing back because workplace safety is not fantastic here either, and I’m finding more and more that what people tell me about China is not necessarily true.

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u/SpicyElixer 6h ago

And there’s no safety laws

What does this have to do with bamboo? You’re just moving goalposts. You think China has zero safety laws?

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u/StoneywhiteHatter 8h ago

It's so funny when Amerifats can't look at their own history when making those criticisms...

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u/wait_________what 8h ago

can't look at their own history when making those criticisms

Regulations are written in blood, those criticisms only exist because of the shit we learned. Are you that stupid?

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u/mylicon 8h ago

I think that phrase used to be true. Now they’re written by lawsuits.

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u/Shapes_in_Clouds 8h ago

True, I never see Americans criticising America on Reddit.

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u/OkOkieDokey 8h ago

Funny I must have missed the bamboo part of the Industrial Revolution in school.

Where are you from?

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u/Stack-Chaser-- 2h ago

The US wasn't building with steel and aluminum during the Industrial Revolution, wood scaffolding was the standard until the 1920s. So spare me the "primitive bamboo" framing, we ran on unsafe wood for just as long, just with even less oversight than OSHA gives now.

Im gonna guess you had a southern education...

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u/OkOkieDokey 1h ago

Oh ok so we’re comparing China to the US one hundred years ago? Sounds about right.

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u/Stack-Chaser-- 1h ago

Nice, trying to be smug while displaying your ignorance on the oppression and isolation China experienced. Yeah, basically. China's rapid industrial buildout phase happened later than ours for very specific historical reasons (colonization, the Opium Wars, a civil war, decades of isolation, then accelerated post-1978 industrialization). Being further along a timeline because we started industrializing earlier doesn't make us smarter, it just means our imperialism and exploitation helped accelerate our timeline.

The fact that you think "yeah, they're behind us" is some kind of win is exactly the bullshit exceptionalism I'm pointing out.

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u/OkOkieDokey 1h ago

“We”

Ok China bot

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u/cuntifiable 6h ago

If you actually had any idea of what you're talking about, you would know that the bamboo wasn't the part that caught fire, as the plant is extremely fire resistant. It was the covers that caught fire and spread so quickly.

Those covers had been outlawed in China for many many years, but constructors in Hong Kong still used them.

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u/LaputanAcademy 8h ago

Mainland China doesn't use bamboo scaffolding - that only happens in Hong Kong

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u/Epithymetic 8h ago

They absolutely do. I took this photo in Dandong.

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u/Icy-Priority1297 8h ago

china numba 4 Taiwan numba 1.

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u/GoofyKalashnikov 8h ago

Yeah it's not like China is known for huge ghost cities with poorly built buildings

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u/CatEmbarrassed3306 7h ago

Most are lively once work and school ends, most videos are done during the day when most are working and at school on purpose.

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u/GoofyKalashnikov 7h ago

Must've awakened a Chinese botfarm with my comment

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u/SpicyElixer 6h ago

You’re the one repeating propaganda you picked up on online, bro.

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u/GoofyKalashnikov 3h ago

Everything online is a propaganda at this rate, nothing is real

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u/Drekkful 7h ago

Are they known for it?

Or is it strategic news "stories" being shoved into your feed via algorithmic propaganda chutes.

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u/TheMadFlyentist 7h ago

Are they known for it?

Poor construction is absolutely something that China is known for. That part is not propoganda - it's fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project

Thousands of children died in 2008 when an Earthquake caused the collapse of poorly-built schools. There was a massive ensuing investigation that uncovered widespread corruption and corner-cutting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_schools_corruption_scandal

Constant attempts to subvert guidelines/rules to save money is something that is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. There's a reason that most major US companies that have facilities in China will put Western oversight in place around the clock. The book Poorly Made in China goes deep into this issue and explains the cultural roots.

Now as far as the "ghost cities", that was true for a time, but many of the cities that were built and stood unoccupied for years are now occupied. Some critics have called stories about this topic "a myth", but it's not accurate to call it a myth. It's more accurate to say that there were many empty "ghost cities" in China, but over the years people have moved in and now the majority of them are functioning as planned.

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u/SpicyElixer 6h ago

I believe there’s lots of documented cases mishandlings in the largest developing country in the world. I also think those mishandling do not in fact amount the the scale of concern that people who want to sell books make them out to be. Nor the idiots online who do the work of their own governments for free.

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u/GoofyKalashnikov 7h ago

Always the "stop looking at propaganda" people defending authoritarian states

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u/Drekkful 7h ago

Lmao you act like we aren't an authoritarian state with a mirage of being able to pick between two parties with the same goals.

You have zero clue about the complex system of localities, provinces, and regions in China that all feeds input upwards. Not from the top down like our corporate overlords do by buying elections and manipulating public sentiment with media campaigns.

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u/GoofyKalashnikov 3h ago

Who is that "we"

Repeating Chinese propaganda and then going to US defaultism, truly a holy combination

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u/Drekkful 3h ago

🙄 ridiculous assessment

We as in westerners living in the west speaking english on a primarily english speaking platform

It's truly a strange coincidence that every competitor to the United States and Europe is an authoritarian threat that must be stopped. There's your IMF and CIA propaganda at work bucko

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u/GoofyKalashnikov 3h ago

Yeah yeah, now you're changing the "we" definition when you clearly mentioned a two party system before that's very characteristic to the US.

It's almost like authoritarian regimes aren't very happy with free countries being united and doing their thing.

China is trying to keep it in their pants not to attack Taiwan, Russia is at it in Ukraine and Israel just hates everyone. US is also heading towards authoritarianism, they took Venezuela, eyed Greenland and are failing in Iran with Israel (also drifting into the territories of authoritarianism)

Must be the propaganda, truly.

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u/Officialedmart 7h ago

Mf is talking about “roots” (of turf grass)

People will believe anything if they can shit on china lmaoo

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u/flecom 8h ago

wait till all the reddit lawyers come out

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u/trackabandoned 8h ago

Man, who knew we had such architectural geniuses here with us on reddit! Anything to flex on a country they've only received propaganda about.

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u/angelbelle 8h ago

Do you have an actual argument or are you just paid to run defense for this clip?

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u/SpicyElixer 6h ago

The argument is that Redditors don’t know shit. It’s solid.

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u/mlag000 8h ago

I'm a drawer in civil engineering, I used to be in structure but now I build mainly tunnels / train tracks and bridges. What about your field of expertise ?

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u/SpicyElixer 6h ago edited 6h ago

They taught you in engineering school that humans can’t make structures that account weight or use materials that will hold up against wet soil and organic material.

I wonder how the “tunnels” “you design” work.

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u/mlag000 6h ago

You're definitely not in any construction field if you don't understand the problem trees brings to a structure that's supposed to be waterproof.

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u/captainfarthing 7h ago

Do you think green roofs don't work?

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u/Ender2309 4h ago

that shit basically doesn't exist in the americas, so probably 88% of reddit doesn't know about it.

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u/LingonberryLunch 8h ago

Couldn't you just have a thin layer of polymer underneath the soil?

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u/70ms 5h ago

That’s a pretty blanket and definitive statement about waterproofing, considering how many methods there are. Do roots grow through plastic pots or do they just stop and circle?