BEIJING — A day after a devastating fire gutted a 28-story Shanghai apartment tower, China faced angry questions on Tuesday about whether this nation’s breakneck
construction boom had sown the seeds of similar accidents in years to come.（政府面临质问了）
Government censors swiftly suppreed the complaints in favor of commentaries about the unavoidable risks of living in skyscrapers and the promise of an official inquiry to be
handled at the highest levels.（政府开始河蟹了）But as the evidence of blatant disregard for safety at the incinerated building grew, disquiet swept from Shanghai, the boom’s high-rise epicenter, acro the country.
Shanghai’s government stated on its Web site that sparks from the welding torches of four unlicensed workers apparently ignited flammable nylon webbing and bamboo scaffolding that sheathed the building as it was undergoing renovations, rapidly engulfing it in flames.（纽约时报说工人是无证操作哟）。
Shanghai, which experts say does not require sprinkler systems for residential buildings, has scores of nylon-wrapped buildings under construction or undergoing renovations, and most of its 20 million people live in skyscrapers.Most of China’s big cities are in the midst of similarly vast building booms.
“I never thought a fire could end up killing so many people,” said Li Dezhu, a 66-year-old retiree who escaped from the 17th floor of the Shanghai building.“We’ve heard about hotels and other entertainment places on fire, but never a residence.And we are the biggest city in the whole country.”
The authorities detained eight people and promised a thorough investigation and a report to the State Council, a government body often likened to the White House cabinet.
Some critics said, however, that the roots of the disaster spread well beyond lax workers at one building to a pervasive lack of safety standards throughout China’s go-go construction industry.（有人认为根源不在于有过失的工人而在于中国狂热的建筑业工程中无处不在的安全保障措施的缺乏。） Some comments on Web sites expreed shame over the fire and the government’s efforts to play it down.（恩，“反华”调调出来了）
The Web site Huasheng Online, run by a Hunan Province newspaper group, described the quality of urban construction in blunt scatological terms before being blocked by
government censors.（CENSORS，哈哈，给力啊）。 “These short-lived constructions are the great disaster left by the Chinese real estate industry’s insane attempts to make money,” the report stated, citing an absence of earthquake- or fire-safety rules.
“What is this kind of economic development for? Is it just for accumulating golden bubbles? Is it so the people can live in utter helplene? Is it so certain corrupt officials will have a large space to embezzle?” （恩，问得好)
China is consuming 40 percent of the world’s cement and steel as part of an urbanization drive that will reshape this nation over the next two decades.(这可是拉动GDP防止产能过
剩的好办法哟） By then, most people in China will live in cities, a majority in high-rise buildings.
With China’s property market growing explosively, developers are scrambling to acquire land and build and sell residences as fast as poible.The analytics firm World Market Intelligence estimates that the country’s construction industry nearly doubled in size from 2005 to 2009.
And while many engineers say construction quality has improved in most big cities, huge problems remain.A 2004 academic study estimated that 9 in 10 construction workers had no training, and a sheaf of news reports show that shortcuts are common, sometimes involving shoddy materials and workmanship as well as corruption.（不是SOMETIMES是ALWAYS吧？）An official of China’s housing and rural development ministry said in April that Chinese buildings were built to last 25 to 30 years, compared with 74 years in the United States and 132 years in Britain.It is not unheard of for buildings to be razed after 10 or 15 years.（又“反华”了不是，不要那么直接）
Nor has firefighting caught up to the skylines.Hoses strained to reach even the middle of the Shanghai building, and the fire was controlled only after hoses were positioned on nearby rooftops.
Similarly, in February 2009, hoses were unable to reach the upper two-thirds of a 34-story hotel and cultural center set on fire by an illegal fireworks show.The building burned all night.But it had not been completed, and only one person, a firefighter, died.
In June 2009, illegal underground excavation for a parking garage in Shanghai caused the 13-story building under way next to it to simply fall over.A construction worker was killed, and a scandal erupted.Two developers were convicted of embezzlement and corruption and sentenced to life in prison.
Cheap construction or the neglect of safety standards have been involved in other cases, including the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, where school collapses killed
thousands of children, and a 2007 bridge collapse in Hunan Province that killed 29.A Nov.5 fire in a shopping mall in Jilin Province killed 19, apparently because a sprinkler system was not activated.（擦，不带这么直接的，影响天朝国际形象，等到专家辟谣）
The building that burned was built in 1997, the government said, and housed about 440 residents.It was undergoing renovation so that it could be fitted with energy-saving equipment.
Huge crowds gathered in the street as scores of fire engines responded, and television reports showed some residents climbing down scaffolding on the building.At least one person was rescued by helicopter.Witnees said some people were forced to jump to their deaths.At a news conference on Tuesday, Shanghai officials said 17 of those hospitalized were in critical condition.
On Tuesday, journalists from Reuters and two Chinese newspapers posted reports on two Internet sites stating that the authorities had detained them at a funeral home in Shanghai where some fire victims had been taken.（内幕哟）
The Communist Party’s main newspaper, People’s Daily, noted that skyscraper living had inherent risks and that American firefighters had also failed to rescue victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.（恩，天朝喉舌的一贯手法）
“When a high-rise catches fire,” the paper stated, “this is a serious matter anywhere it occurs in the world, and will garner the same kind of attention.
