Ancient Chinese Scaffolding> Doug Moldover, Guest Blogger

My friend Gus Jenkinberg, a construction worker I know back in Wisconsin, told me that while I was in China I couldn't miss Lao Long Tou, the first section of the Great Wall located in a small town called Shanhaiguan. When he was there in January for Christmas vacation he saw some triple gated Kingston style scaffolding, only it was made of bamboo! I just had to see this! So I drag the wife and kids out to Shanhaiguan (They wanted to stay in Beijing and go shopping.) and we enter what I think is the entrance gate to Lao Long Tou. It was only after a few minutes and several wasted admission tickets later that I realized this was not the LLT but instead some Great Wall Museum. Fuckers. Fortunately they had one room where they had a life size reproduction of the construction techniques that were used when building the wall. You can see by my picture that the scaffolding they use was a death trap. No wonder so many people died building the wall. I had to fight the impulse to reinforce the joints with duct tape. I wouldn't have had time anyway because Billy pissed all over the reproduction Emperor Qin Shi Huang. That's no way to treat China's first emperor. We finally found the LLT but the triple gated Kingston style scaffolding had been removed (see picture) as the restoration had been finished. What a disappointment. -Doug