Just reading today on Marc van der Chijs' Shanghaied Weblog about a tunnel being built under the Huangpu River in Shanghai:

From Marc:

It's not easy to explain to people outside China how quickly Chinese can do things. In Shanghai I have seen roads being built in a few days and buildings going up in a matter of months instead of years. Many people don't believe it until they visit Shanghai and feel the vibe of this city and the work ethos of the people. Here things happen instead of that people just talk about them.

Today's paper version of the Shanghai Daily had a great example of this. It published an article about a new tunnel that is currently being constructed under the Huangpu river, and they reported that the tunneling machines broke through to the other side this weekend. The Renmin Road tunnel will have two passages of each 2470 meters long and will be finished in the 4th quarter of this year. I have to admit that I don't know a single thing about construction, let alone about tunnel construction, but building a 2.5 km tunnel (or actually 2 tunnels) within 9 months after drilling to the other side of the river seems awfully fast to me.

But that's not all, because the article matter-of-factly ends with the sentence: "Currently 7 tunnels are under construction and they are all due to open before the World Expo 2010". Seven new tunnels - and all to be finished in just over a year. That could only happen in China!