http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/11/imf-discovers-chinese-over-investment/
Some people see art, others see what they want to see.
We dig holes but then we fill them up again leaving nothing. It is called a bail out. We, however, are so advanced compared to the Chinese that we do not even have to pay real people real money to dig holes in the ground so they can spend the money they make doing it to buy stuff that others produce. We just made it more efficient and dump money in a hole in the ground.
If the bridge to nowhere is a Chinese expression of money as art then ours would be a hole in the ground filled with money. A bridge to nowhere ending at a hill on the other side is perhaps a Chinese statement that their bridges are being built today it to go through the mountain tomorrow. Infra structure planning. Putting money into the hands of those that built it today so they can buy cars to go through the tunnel to be built to the other side.
Meanwhile, back on the home front we are facing a Fiscal Cliff.
Chinese built a tunnel to nowhere near Ashland, Oregon, USA. Nothing ever connected to it. It is a very interesting story:
This is an original newspaper story clipping here.
And a recent story written about it here
They put some holes in a mountain nearby, called it a tunnel, and then they walked away.
It was the end of a 30-year dream and two years of surveyors scrambling through the Siskiyou Mountains.
If you go
A visit to the Buck Rock Tunnel's west entrance
is best done in late summer or early autumn when the grass is low and
the trail easier to find. If you can, it's best to go with someone who's
been there before.
From Interstate 5,
Ashland Exit 14, drive east on the Greensprings Highway (Highway 66) to
Buckhorn Springs Road (just past mile marker 9). Turn right. Continue
three-tenths of a mile straight onto Forest Service Road 39-2E-34.
After climbing 2.3 miles, look for the parking area on your left.
The
trail begins beyond the yellow barrier, opposite the parking area. It
requires some effort. You walk mostly uphill for just over 1.75 miles.
Do not take any of the side roads branching to the left.
Shortly
after passing a shallow, greenish, spring-filled pool that covers the
trail, you'll see a matted-down grass trail in a small open area to your
left. Follow the trail a few yards uphill until you see a wider dirt
and stone trail to your left. Follow this trail .15 mile to the tunnel
and a metal commemorative sign placed in 1977 by the Southern Oregon
Historical Society.
No one could have been more disappointed than
Joe "Shorty" Neal, who had just set up a restaurant and saloon near the
construction site. Stocked with the "best wines, liquors and cigars
available in the market" and offering "guaranteed good treatment and a
square meal," Neal had expected months of money rolling out of the
pockets of the rough-and-tumble railroad workers.
In
1882, nearly a decade after the southbound construction of the Oregon
and California Railroad had stopped in Roseburg, rails were again being
laid, mile by mile, to Jackson County.
John
Quincy Adams Hurlburt, a highly respected, self-taught surveyor, had
been with the railroad almost from the day the first tie was laid in
Portland. In early September 1881, headquarters ordered him to
immediately stop survey work southwest of Roseburg and, as quickly as
possible, get his crew into the Siskiyou Mountains.
It
would be more than 21/2; years before the railroad would reach Ashland,
but before it did a way had to be found to cross over the mountains and
meet up with the railroad already being built northward from Redding,
Calif.
The engineering obstacles were
overwhelming for Hurlburt. The rail line would climb from Ashland to the
summit in such a steep grade that well over a dozen switchbacks might
be required, and the tunnel at the top would have to be more than 4,000
feet long. That would cost the railroad a small fortune, a fortune they
weren't willing or able to pay.
The solution
was to send the tracks on a long, gradually climbing, nearly 9-mile
curve to the east, then cut a 1,600-foot tunnel through Buck Rock
Mountain before returning to the summit, where a shorter tunnel of about
3,000 feet would be dug. It was quicker and safer to blast out two
tunnels instead of one long one, and because of the lower grade, once
the line was in service operating expenses would be less.
In
September 1883, a gang of Chinese workers was transferred down from the
summit tunnel to begin working with railroad crews on construction of
the Buck Rock Tunnel.
They started
simultaneously at each end and began blasting toward each other, using
the latest technology, the compressed-air-powered Burleigh Drill that
could bore dozens of holes simultaneously into rock. Each hole was
packed with powder, a fuse was lit, and the shattered rock was mucked
out of the tunnel and dumped.
Winter snow
brought water into the tunnel and slowed work. Then, in February 1884
and without warning, all work on the uncompleted tunnel stopped and
speculation began. It was the fault of Congress, some said. The railroad
was up for sale, said others. The survey was flawed. Maybe it was the
weather. Things will be fine in the summer, right?
In
fact, the railroad was out of money. The tracks ended at Ashland, just a
few dozen miles and a mountain away from the California rail line.
With two unfinished holes on each side of a mountain, the Buck Rock Tunnel would never see a train pass through.
Writer Bill Miller lives in Shady Cove. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.
This is what I ask: Exactly what is it that the Chinese may have learned from us about digging holes in the ground that they took back to China. What is their story view of the hole in the ground that they dug for us here?
Dig us into a hole. Dig a hole for us to fall into by building a bridge to nowhere?
Who is stupid and who is sly?
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