Travel: What it’s like to visit China – Workplace and Government Safety Standards
Just writing that title made me laugh because I remember seeing how many workplace violations there would be if they were in North America under rules.
CLEANING SKYSCRAPER WINDOWS AS A JOB
So no big deal, just a bunch of people cleaning skycrapers…. right?
ON FRICKING ROPES AND PLASTIC BUCKETS.
These are NOT small skyscrapers either.
They are HUGE. TALL. SKY. SCRAPING. SKY SCRAPERS.
I saw this and had to do a double-take.
PEOPLE TAKING MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS
Need an air conditioner? Can’t carry it up the stairs or want an easier way?
Just lift it with some ropes, by yourself, without ANY concern for passerbys crossing around who could be killed by a falling air conditioner.
Just another day in China.
BAMBOO CONSTRUCTION SITES
These looked surprisingly sturdy, except for the fact that they don’t use super strong twist zip ties as they do in Hong Kong to set up construction sites.
These bamboo things go across huge buildings to fix and repair them, but in China, they’re held together by… what is that.. ROPE?
Needless to say, safety helmets, harnesses… not really something that’s on the top of their list.
But if you are a foreign company building in China, you may have different ideas on what constitutes “workplace safety”:
WORKING ON METAL
Their idea of blocking off an area, is a bunch of flags on a rope.
What’s worse, is that if you look closely at the welder, he just has a CLOTH OVER HIS FACE.
Not even a proper welding mask.
His glasses? Sunglasses. Probably not even polarized, they looked like normal safety glasses.
No protective gear… that’s how they roll there.
KIDS TRAVELING WITHOUT HELMETS IN THIS CRAZY TRAFFIC
This really made my heart skip.
Can you imagine biking in this kind of traffic, with these lack of safety regulations and rules, going right beside buses with your KID(S) balancing on the back?
Not a helmet in sight.
A DAYCARE UNDERNEATH BUTCHER TABLES
15 Comments
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Tracy
Your posts about China are kind of offensive. As a Chinese-Canadian reader of your blog, some of your comments are so biased against China that I have trouble respecting your opinion. I get it, you don’t like China, you don’t like buying things from China, it’s dirty, polluted, unsafe, and you would never go back. That’s cool, I don’t particularly care for certain parts of the world either.
However, you’re gonna pick on China for its lack of safety regulations? Really? If you visit pretty much any country in South-East Asia you see the same problems. It comes from being a developing country, where many of its citizens still live below the poverty line. There are plenty of construction companies that abide by top-tier safety rules, such as the conglomerates, but if we’re talking about mom-and-pop tradespeople, there are plenty here in Canada that don’t use proper equipment either.
My offense to this post, is that in tandem with your previous China posts, I’m sensing a LOT of hate towards China as a country, rather than towards developing countries who all share the same struggles that China does. I really wish you would’ve said at least ONE THING that you found beautiful or that you liked about your travels, but you didn’t, and you focused solely on the negative things. Your comment below about Chinese drivers running over children was SO OFFSIDE it’s borderline ignorant. There are crazy people everywhere, look at the crazies in America who shoot up movie theatres and elementary schools? They don’t represent USA as a whole, they are outliers in the population with mental health issues. A few crazy drivers in China do not represent the average Chinese people and I really question your judgment if you think it does.
-Long time blog reader.
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GirlinaTrenchcoat
Gaaah I saw #1 and my knees went weak. I hate heights.
And the no helmet thing is horrible. Our tour bus actually hit a man on a bike in Beijing and the bus driver didn’t even get out to check if the guy was ok, it was a fellow passenger who told the driver to stop and see if the man was alright. Lucky he was, but still… what COULD have happened…
Sadly I see a lot of this in my home country as well so it doesn’t surprise me. 🙁
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CorianneM
Well, except for the helmets on bikes (you get used to it, and they don’t drive particularly fast + once you know the ‘unofficial’ rules, it’s relatively safe – I felt safer than in the Netherlands on my bike, that’s for sure), I say: omg!
And feeling quite nostalgic. When I lived in Beijing, I saw once a guy fixing something on the outer wall of my dorm. He was on the 7th/8th floor or sth, WITHOUT ANY ropes or safety gear holding him.
Also once saw a documentary on skyscrapers in Shanghai. Some of these builders weren’t wearing any gear like ropes and they were working several tens of stories high! :O
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NZ Muse
LOL Yep these were a shocker all through Asia. As someone used to working on sites T kept freaking out about the total lack of safety everywhere.
And the same for things like tours – we’re pretty stringent here in NZ on adventure type stuff, whereas on the sea tours we did in Thailand and Vietnam it was a bit of a free for all.
101 Centavos
Nice pictures.
This could be an advert for the *good side* of personal injury attorneys. Nothing like the threat of litigation to instill a culture of safety. 🙂
Seriously, speaking as someone who’s traveled extensively in SE Asia to industrial sites, the adoption of “Western-type” health, safety and environmental (HSE) norms is something that comes slowly. Even in tigerish industrially developed countries Japan and Korea.
Having said that, there are plenty of small industry in North America that fail miserably on HSE compliance.