..as long as its not raw logs. Finished products all the way.

Tianjin is as flat as a pancake, not unlike Richmond. I understand the predominate soil type is about a 10+ meter layer of seabed marine clay on top of a stiff sandy silt layer.

So, going to pile type footings would be relatively normal. Of course, with the recent Japan earthquake and the resulting Tsunami, portions of the Tianjin area could just as easily float way. Aparently there was a Tsunami that hit the area just prior to 1900 and killed 4,000. That earthquake which gnerated the tsunami was off the coast of northern Japan.

Here is the latest development under way in Tianjin.
http://www.seanews.com.tr/article/HOTN/57067/TIANJIN-port-

Looking in my crystal ball, I see more products coming from China. :-)

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/pab/media/bell/2010/11/02b

Some pictures.

To be frank, I think we need some of those apartment buildings here. They have them in the southern interior, the GVRD, and on the island. But we keep getting these butt ugly things along Ferry, etc. with people staring each other down from living rooms across a paved driveway.

I am sure at least the chinese are getting better quality lumber than we get here in PG. Why is it all the top grade lumber ends up in foreign market places and none is supplied to local retailers? I for one would be willing to pay a little more per 2x4 if it was free of checks, cracks, twists, rot, wane without having to sift through a whole lift just to get a few good boards. I am also wondering if it is all chinese money paying for these apt buildings or is it in part or whole being financed by BC taxpayers as a promotional project to try to get china to buy more lumber.

These buildings have a lot of BC money in them. Thats because we are trying to get them to change how they do things.

Problem is, if you look at all the buildings in the background of these pictures, and do a little reading on Chinese apartment and house construction you would see that they have been building for years and years without lumber. Some of the houses they build are actually great, and we should be looking into building some of them here.

Lets keep in mind, that the only reason houses are built from wood, is because it is a cheap way to build, however the down side is that a wood house only lasts for about 50-75 years, where brick and concrete, and steel, etc; would last much longer.

Jim Shepard from Canfor stated in a speech at his retirement a month or so ago, that Canfor and the BC Forest Industry had financed and set up schools in China to teach engineering students how to build houses with lumber. They did this 20 years ago.

The forest industry has been trying to sell top grade lumber into China for the last 20/30 years with little or no success. Dont expect this to turn around anytime soon just because Pat Bell happened to be appointed Minister of Forests.

There are only three things that are driving the sale of lumber to China.

1. The Russians have put on a 800% duty on raw long exports to China to force Russian forest companies to build more sawmills in Russia, thus creating more jobs, and then selling the lumber to China rather than logs. We should be feeling the impact of this pretty soon.

2. The huge collapse of the housing market in the USA which resulted in a large number of mills in BC shutting down, and of course the Softwood Lumber Agreement. This made more lumber available for sale to China, albeit, at a cheaper price. The US Market is starting to bounce back.

3. The huge amount of cheap trees available because of the beetle kill, which because there is no export tax on lumber sold to China allows BC Mills to sell cheap lumber to China. Most of the lumber sold to China is utility lumber and is used for Concrete Forms. They require a lot of this cheap lumber for this purpose. I suspect that once the lumber is no longer good for forms, it is chipped, and used to make OSB which they then use in the construction of homes and apartments.

Sales of BC lumber in the next few years to China will depend entirely on the US and Japanese Market. If these markets pick up then sales to China will decrease.

The entire production of Canfors mill that re-opened in Quesnel a few months ago, is sold to China. This is all utility grade lumber, and it is not planed. It is terrible looking stuff, and if you saw it, you would then know for sure that it is not being used in house construction, unless the Chinese are running it through a planer in China.

Have a nice day.

We can now buy top grade lumber at Home Hardware on the bypass (previous Beaver Lumber). I was pleasantly surprised to find Lakeland Mills 2X4's and 2X6's there. Every board had 4 sides and they were all straight but one out of the 26 that I bought. I didn't have to pick through them either. The two guys working there (who were both couteous and awake)picked through them and loaded my van. Awesome service and top quality product.