Today, workers are rebuilding Angelenos' freeways with a headlong vengeance and are hammering dawn to dusk on crunched houses, offices and malls.

Two workers were hammering and drilling.

This week, workers frantically hammered the last planks on an $8 million pavilion where President Jiang Zemin of China will take control of the eight-square-mile territory from Mr. Sampaio.

At the same time, labor leaders estimate, as many as 500,000 foreign workers, legal and illegal, are hammering nails and pouring concrete.

Or who knows, maybe the workers were superstitious, and hammered in a design of nails to represent a cross.

A worker making a cowbell hammers the metal on a workbench, loudly, and Mr. Rivera chimes: "Clang, clang!"

Along Raj Path, the vast grassy esplanade and boulevard leading to the Government buildings, workers hammered huge wooden beams into the asphalt and began laying steel pipe barriers across roadways.

Under the makeshift shed where workers saw and hammer away to complete the ship, Hilaire Altidore, a gray-whiskered, unemployed man of 58, also expresses a strong desire to reach the United States.

And now he was trying to restore his life at home to some semblance of order while workers hammered and clattered and moved furniture.

"I think it's great," Mrs. Cama said as workers in the building hammered, drilled and threaded electrical wiring through unfinished floors and walls.