A couple Sundays ago, late morning, workers began shearing stone tiles at a curbside near my apartment building. They were laying sidewalk tile by tile, by hand. Their weapon of choice was a grinder they would use to painstakingly slice the stone to fit snugly with those they had already fitted. The noise the stone cutters make is akin to fingernails scratched on a chalk board, or a dentist’s drill boring into a tooth. I eventually went to bed after 12:30am, some fourteen hours after they had started. A neighbor told me the next day he had gone to bed at 1am, and the workers were still at it. The next morning the granite slicing was still going on, at 7am, though I cannot say with certainty whether it was the same workers.

And then the question occurred to me: “What’s the rush?” “It’s Sunday,” I thought, “why not take the day off?” And then, in the evening, I mused, “It’s night; why not sleep?” Not just with manic stone masonry, but with everything in “the country that never sleeps” that is in overdrive. Whether property development or manufacturing production work or servicing customers or going shopping, the sense of having achieved a supersonic speed of life is palpable. It’s no wonder that a Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Psychology report in 2010 presented that in a sampling of 50,000 urban workers 60 percent were “sub-healthy”. The Chinese Academy of Sciences report stated, “”While one in 10 Americans will encounter situations where they need help from mental health professionals, most Chinese turn to their families and friends when they need help,” according to the China Daily. Chinese culture, though, believes mental health issues are shameful, a loss of face to the disabled individual and to his family. So, basically, most people genuinely suffering from the stress of economic development at the speed of light are screwed.

China’s GDP growth figures are still not up to the double-digit rates they need to create enough jobs for the young people coming out of university, the potential foot soldiers of the country’s nascent services sector. Nor does much of the interior of the country have the infrastructure in place to bring its citizens up to the living standards many along China’s east coast enjoy.

Still, is this 24/7 craziness really necessary? It’s certainly not sustainable. Not over the long haul. One day, China will rest, I’m sure. But not because of a job well done. It will have been through karoshi – Japanese style overwork. With Chinese characteristics, of course.

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