An American friend who's lived in China for a lot of years tells the story of a strange man lurking in an apartment building scaring some of the residents. A meeting of the residents was called to find a solution and immediately someone said, build a wall! There was no mention of replacing the non-functional lights in the hallway or the other numerous problems that actually were safety concerns, instead, simply and naturally, build a wall! The wall was never built because other questions soon arose... we'll need a gate. We'll need someone to guard the gate. We'll need to pay this person, and pay for the wall. Who will pay for this? But all this shows the natural Chinese reaction and feeling of safety behind walls.
Today, walls are still being built all over the country, despite the many modernizations it's undergone in the past 25 years or so and is still undergoing. And, currently, a wall is being built right in my own backyard. An adjacent building to the headquarters of my comany here in Beijing recently put some windows in a wall of their own that looks right into our property. Whether for reasons of air circulation, for the view, or for other reasons (...the adjacent building with the new windows happens to be owned by the Public Security Bureau), the windows were put in and caused a problem for our company seeking to keep some of it's own going-ons private. Our solution? Build a wall!
Here's the progress of the wall construction (a couple of days apart), specifically so those windows don't see into our windows. Seems pretty funny to me, but it's certainly the Chinese way of doing things. Whatever view the PSB wanted, it's now just of some old-fashioned brick and mortar.
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