They're worried that their population bubble is going to pass pretty soon and they're going to start on a downhill slide. In some of the rural areas, they're already seeing young people leaving for the cities.
It's the history of who you are, your family and your background, they just take a longer perspective. If it doesn't happen instantly like Americans want, that's fine. If I don't make it, my children will, and you could really see that patience.
I can try cutting back some trips over the field for fuel prices, but it's not like I'm out there doing recreational tillage now. You only go over it when you have to. You can cut back on fertilizer but it's not like we're over fertilizing to start with. You start cutting back too much and you're hurting yields and that hurts your bottom line. There's no way around it.
In China, there's no such thing as an informal meeting. We had meetings where they rolled out the red carpet, literally. Everybody has name cards, there's a sequence of who speaks when, there are large banners and flowers. That's just the way they do things, very formal.
It's a commitment that schools have to make early enough to develop the budget to support it. It's hard to come back after a bond has passed and a budget is in place and try to do all these things.
High-performance design is gaining momentum.
They thought that was just fantastic.
There's probably a 5 to 10 percent premium in construction costs for a high-performance, sustainable school. For a high school that may cost $50 million, that's a chunk of change.
Yet on the other side, you have guys with their shoulder pole and two buckets of manure, just like they've done for a thousand years.
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