On Tuesday afternoon, people bought roasted chestnuts and other snacks at the little corner kiosk but less than 24 hours later, it was nothing but a pile of rubble! No, we don’t live in a war zone and we’re a long distance away from China’s recent earthquake, but to look at the area a few blocks from here last week, one would have seriously wondered.

We first noticed that something was amiss when we left the school for a quick lunch before Tuesday afternoon’s dance class. (See Can I have this dance? posted on March 26) Along a two or three block stretch, the fronts had literally been torn off every business! Restaurants, bakeries and other businesses were continuing to serve customers while completely open to the street!

The next afternoon, we decided to walk that way again to see what was happening. That’s when we discovered that the snack shop on the corner was gone and that the new fronts on the other businesses were being constructed about a metre further back from the street than where they’d previously been. What in the world was going on? Had they encroached on city property and been forced to move off? Had a bylaw suddenly changed, requiring them to make these alterations? That kind of thing happens in China all the time, we’re told.

On our way home, we decided to circle around through some of the tiny back streets and that’s when we discovered that the destruction was much more widespread than we’d first realized. Piles of broken glass and rubble were everywhere! On one street, we came across a backhoe in the process of demolishing a small structure. The area was cordoned off with yellow ribbon and a row of uniformed policemen stood nearby. I wanted to take photos but I thought better of it. As foreigners, we’re already very conspicuous. I didn’t want to find out what kind of attention a foreigner with a camera might generate!

There are lots of things about this country that we’ll never understand and this situation is definitely one of them! Rumours have abounded this week. We’ve heard tales of an upcoming international gathering of some sort coming to Dalian soon and the city wanting to clean up and put on a good face for the world. Knowing that that’s what happened in Beijing prior to the Olympic Games being held there in 2008, I might have believed that story had I not seen the mess on the back streets. I could imagine a cavalcade of foreign visitors traversing busy Huanghe Road where we initially witnessed the changes happening but they’d have absolutely no reason to enter any of the tiny back streets.

Others have speculated that there may be gang involvement. We’re told that, through extortion, gangs exert firm control over certain territories within the city and that business owners regularly pay the gangs for "protection" ensuring that their establishments will not be disturbed by the ruling gang or by others including the authorities. Did the business owners in the affected area anger the controlling gang and lose their protection allowing the city or the police to enforce changes? I have no idea! I do know that this kind of gang activity has been documented in US cities with large Chinese populations which leads me to believe that it probably happens here too though we would never actually see it.

Today we walked through the affected area again. Though some of the businesses are still undergoing reconstruction, the rubble is mostly gone and the area cleaned up. One would hardly know that anything untoward had happened. Perhaps what surprises me most in all of this is the fact that, in the midst of everything that was happening, for most people business continued as usual. People seemed to simply accept what was happening without protest or emotion.

"This is China" is the simple explanation that most people give!