Fire, Safety, and Recovery

These are three random pictures that I have taken during my time here in Taixing. I just found them and although the y may not be directly related . I can see the connection and it is all a little bit scary. The first picture is entitled "The Roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!" Although the picture may not clearly show it this building has just caught fire and is going to burn down. I walked past it on my way home and couldn't believe that there was a huge gathering down below. The mood was actually quite jovial and it took the fire department about 40 minutes to show up. I have walked past the building since and it look s like it is still standing but the fire has gutted it.


This picture is entitled, "Locksmith? We don't need no stinking locksmith!"
You are looking at the outer doors that lead to the sliding doors which are the doors to my office. At the end of the day, I need to lock the doors when I leave to protect all of the company secrets. As you can see from the picture, the doors in the office don't actually have any locks built in so we need to improvise. The system that we are currently using is to take a bike lock adn weave it through the door handles. This is how every door in the building is locked. Even the front doors. The first week I was here I was locked in my office by one of the workers who thought that I had already gone home. That was fun and funny. It just goes to show, to every problem there is a simple solution. It really just depends on what your idea of ridiculous is. I tie this picture to the previous one by noting that a building catching on fire is dangerous enough but in China they like to up the ante by locking themselves in with bike locks.

This last picture is called, "Please God, don't let me get locked in a burning building in Taixing"
I took this picture at the Taixing hospital. This is the top-of-the-line room. We went to visit a worker who swallowed a gallon of gasoline by accident. The hospital scared the shit out of me. It was dark and dirty. The bed sheets on most of the beds were dirty, used, and stained. There were archaic looking hooks hanging from above the beds. I really hope that I don't get sick here. The doctors and nurses were nice and I am sure that they are competent but the facility was not very encouraging. Fortunately, they are currently building a new hospital which looks like it will be a big beautiful building. This new hospital is a positive example of how the recent, dramatic development is helping the people in Taixing. For the meantime though, I really don't want to get sick here.

There you have three snap shots from my life in Taixing. I hope that the next time you use your key to unlock the door to your house, you think of me trying to figure out how to unlock a bike lock from the inside of two glass doors.