Progress is concrete but silence is golden

Every night, while I am safely protected from the world in my bed, there's an unseen army toiling away to make Tianjin a better place.

Working around the clock, battered by the elements, migrant laborers are constructing the new Tianjin Metro stations, and tunneling out the subway lines.

If you're not familiar with subway construction, let me fill you in on a few pertinent details.

There are holes that need to be dug. Deep holes. Holes big enough to swallow a couple of trains, and leave space for passenger platforms on the side.

How are those holes constructed?

Well, if you think the "Hole Fairy" comes along with his magic pickaxe and carves it out with a wave of his hand, you're sadly mistaken.

No, no, no ... these holes don't dig themselves.

Instead, a veritable army of people are brought in, armed to the teeth with shovels, spades, wheelbarrows and picks, and they dig the hole. Even in the depths of winter they're there, trying to scrape out a living by scraping away at the frozen soil - hard working migrant laborers trying to support a faraway family.

Helping them is a squadron of heavy equipment that gouges, chews and spits out the rock for waiting trucks. They tirelessly labor like robotic dinosaurs, hacking and biting into the living earth as if they're feasting on the very soil itself.

They work ceaselessly. Every minute is precious, chipping away, moving the project closer to completion.

And where are they doing it?

Not far from my bedroom window! The noise is incredible. Some nights I can't sleep, just because of the sheer volume of it.

But it can't be just me that this noise is affecting.

What about those migrant laborers, the ones that Time Magazine labeled as "Person Of The Year" for their contribution to progress?

When do they sleep?

I went down to look at the construction site and wasn't pleased with what I saw. The workers live and sleep in cramped, dirty portable buildings less than 100 meters away from the constant noise and light of the excavations.

Sleep must be almost impossible under those conditions.

It made me feel as if all my protestations were merely paper tigers, and that I had no problems at all.

These migrant laborers are the forgotten face of progress. When we pass them in the street, we barely even see them, let alone think about the hardships they face.

Is the rapid pace of progress worth this sacrifice? How can we ignore their plight? These people need the same basic things that you and I need to survive - food, shelter, water and sleep.

Good, solid, uninterrupted sleep.

The kind of sleep that you can't get when there's an urban dinosaur prowling and stomping around at 3 in the morning.

Can't we have a curfew on the operation of heavy machinery? Would a few hours a night make that much difference to the completion date?

Surely the idea of having well rested, refreshed workers must have some appeal to those who want the subway constructed?

The fringe benefits for those around the site would be considerable, too, when construction halts for a while.

Then I could get some decent sleep as well!

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