CHINA US Focus - Perspectives shaping the world's most important bilateral relationship

As a crane lowered a steel-and-concrete slab onto support pillars, construction workers swarmed around to bolt it down - a choreography of mad-dash steps against a backdrop of firecrackers, and a sacrificed cow, to herald China's latest "instant building".

 

The three-story structure, a workers' cafeteria, was just a side note to a 30-story hotel built over 15 days outside this city in Hunan province in December. Both are examples of the streamlined construction being pioneered by China's Broad Sustainable Building (BSB).