Win China a few years back I watched in awe as a huge team of engineers, contractors and general workers toiled on building a six-lane highway, complete with overbridges, about 30km outside of Shanghai.
As one of the blokes with me explained, when they decide to build something in China they build it.
Resource consent?
I don't think so.
Public consultation?
What's it got to do with the public?
They're damned lucky to be getting a road ... despite the fact we learned that about 40 families were effectively told to shift house (literally) because a highway was coming through.
While they received what I daresay would have been basic compensation, they did at least get given enough time to avoid the bulldozers.
Now I don't go along with that "we're building it here so get out" approach, but one thing I did admire was the Chinese resolve to build something, and build it quickly.
We were told the highway stretch had only been in the pipeline for about four months. The site surveyors went in, devised the best route to run it, then the contractors were appointed and a team of door knockers sent out to advise the residents of the 40 or so homes in the path of it they needed to get out ... and no 90-day stuff here. They got about a month.
No, the Chinese do not tarry when infrastructure is required.
That I do admire ... it's the aggressive "move" ingredient I can't settle with.
The only folk who do are the Chinese folk at the foot of the pile who know that to try and fight city hall and insist on a public referendum will only result in a bulldozer inexplicably going out of control at 3 in the morning and taking the back of the house off.
But boy, can they build quick and build well.
That motorway, about 35km of it, was tagged with a completion date only about six months out from the day the green flag to start digging foundations was raised.
Astonishing (although there was such a major workforce involved they were building it at both ends and from the middle - they would all join up beautifully and raise glasses of some horrible sweet liquor as a completion toast when all three met perfectly.
Now, if some sort of middle ground, some sort of compromise, could be gleaned from this then Wellingtonians, and the rest of us who have to venture by car to the capital, would by Christmas no longer have to drive on a road more decrepit than the long-abandoned and un-maintained Route 66 across the USA.
But no. For it seems there are so many legal and moral obligations ... so much red tape and so many consultations and working parties ... the highway into the capital of this country will likely still be in the "planning stages" when Halley's Comet returns.
But that's how it goes out here, although we do have the drop on them when it comes to building a house.
I have before me the instructions which came affixed to a delightful and colourful little model cottage which was built, in miniature prefabrication form, in China and dispatched across the seas to land here.
It looked a picture.
The instructions looked like a challenge.
At the top of the page, in solid lettering, are the words "The House Assembles the Diagram".
Okey, dokey, whatever you say.
But it's the priceless advice at the foot of page one which had us wondering how this mighty nation to the east can build a six-lane motorway in six months.
"Please show the number according to the diagram to proceed to assemble!! Whole assembles the process to need the person serve as guardian to down complete."
That is it ... word for word.
However, my son worked it out.
He indeed showed me the number (it was number 1) and said he would start from there and finish at the image by number 21.
He added he would take responsibility as the guardian of the construction, despite the fact a check of the numbered steps revealed number 16 was actually missing.
"To hell with the chimney then," he said, and proceeded to build this cottage while its owner, our 2-year-old granddaughter, watched on perplexed.
An hour later, having failed to source consents or make consultations, the cottage stood firm and stout in the centre of the room.
Our granddaughter was delighted, and proceeded to pull the entire back wall off so she could make "Mr Elephant" fit inside.
She, too, declined to seek a building permit for said removal or consent from neighbours (her mum and dad).
If she decides to learn Mandarin she'll be a shoo-in for a job with the Shanghai Motorway Construction Company.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
By about 2pm, police determined the package posed no threat.