These two are part of the crew working on the site pictured in the previous post. Somehow most working Chinese, like these two men, remain cheerful and friendly in the face of the difficulties they endure. They leave their families in rural China for extended periods of time to work for low wages on construction crews in big cities. They work six or seven days a week for long hours on sites that are often dangerously unsafe, live in crowded dingy dormitories and eat lousy food. At the completion of a project, it is not uncommon for construction workers to end up getting short changed on wages or, in extreme cases, not paid at all. There are laws addressing all of these issues, but in a system where the courts are appendages of the ruling party and wealthy real estate developers invariably have cozy relationships with powerful government officials, the law functions as a tool to keep working people in check rather than a means of redressing wrongs.