The news has travelled the world and it has been headline stories in China for 3 weeks, but I have found it difficult to comprehend the scale of the devastation caused by the earthquake in Sichuan Province.
The figures do convey something of its magnitude. I can tell you that by noon on Sunday the 1st of June 69,016 people were confirmed dead, 18,830 missing and 368,545 injured, and it is said that 5 million people are homeless and another 15.15 million people have been relocated.
However I have gained more understanding from stories of individual people and communities. The suffering of parents was brought home with a picture a water bottle standing, untouched, beside 2 tiny, but different, shoes on the feet of 2 young girls, their thin legs protruding from under a fallen boulder. The high toll amongst school students was reinforced by the photo of Liao Bo trapped between concrete slabs. He was one of 20 survivors out of a class of 69 students. The magnitude of the disaster was revealed when reading of Qingchuan County, with a population of 250,000 people, which has lost 95% of their housing stock. The isolation of many victims was illustrated by an elderly women caring for and feeding her husband pinned under a fallen building column. They waited 11 days for help. And the difficulty to provide aid was exposed by stories of rescuers taking hours and days to walk into the area, over damaged roads and around destroyed bridges, risking, and in some cases succumbing to, landslides.Liao Bo, a student at Beichuan Middle School (China Daily 14 May 2008)
Media Coverage
In Hong Kong, on May the 12th, my first indication of the earthquake was watching the news in my hotel and seeing footage of Premier Wen Jiabao, within hours of the first tremor, onboard a plane overseeing rescue plans. Yet the news coverage was varied; American channels initially suggested the government was not doing enough, while Chinese channels showed good news stories of people being rescued and the authorities, soldiers and civilians giving their all to help. Over the next few days Premier Wen Jiabao’s constant appearances on television, his rousing speeches and tender words to children started to feel irritatingly like an election campaign, but he was there and actively engaged. I am not sure the American government responded so quickly or decisively to Hurricane Katrina. Equally interesting was the immediate and live news coverage giving the people of China to opportunity to follow the events closely and allowing a level of critical analysis to emerge.
In Zhangzhou
By the time I returned to Zhangzhou, 3 days later, the city had mobilised to assist the people of Sichuan. Red banners were strung across roads encouraging people to donate at collection booths set on street corners. One morning the staff from the company managing our apartment complex congregated at our main gate, lining up and dropping many hundreds of yuan into a glass-sided collection box. I was worried by the very open nature of this, and the possible need to impress with the amount of money given, but genuine feeling was visible and apparent willingness seemed evident. This active involvement had, by the 31st of May, helped swell the total donations, to 40.1 billion yuan (US$5.8 billion).
At the entrance to the upmarket shopping complex groups of young people performed to encourage donations, and we, as foreigners, were called to the front to show our support of the Chinese people. Later, visiting Wal-mart in the same shopping centre, I saw the staff preparing white tissue flowers to pin to their lapels. Exactly one week after the first quake the staff of Wal-Mart, and the country, stood in silence to remember the dead and think of those suffering and assisting. At Number 1 Middle School one class participating in an ‘English Evening’ changed their presentation, at the last minute, to make a moving tribute to those caught up in the disaster.In the end it is the reaction of the people of Zhangzhou that has underlined to me the scale of the event. Their generous giving, active involvement and sincere concern show the magnitude of the disaster and how deeply it is felt across China.
