Remembering the earthquake

Here is a brief description about what happened to us in Chengdu one year ago, something I wrote to tell friends and family. Our experience of course was nothing compared to what the people (who lost so many loved ones) up in the quake epicenter area experienced, something a hundred thousand times worse: 

As you all know the earthquake happened on Monday May 12th, 2008 at 2.28 pm in the afternoon. This was our daughter Emy's birthday and luckily, because of this we were all in Chengdu city and not up in the mountains where I had planned to take visiting friends. 

The day before the earthquake Paddy had just come home from Yunnan in time to celebrate Emy's big day. On the morning of the 12th we got Emy out of bed and celebrated her birthday in the Swedish way with presents and treats. She and Burton went off to school and I and Paddy spent a leisurely day catching up on talk and work. Just the week before I had been away in other parts of China working for 34 days straight. The day after I arrived back our guests from Sweden arrived and Paddy left for Yunnan. The 12th was a fantastically lovely day, sunny and warm and wonderful. I had sent our guests off to visit a temple in another part of town. I was feeling exhausted and loving the peace and quiet at home. For the evening we had planned to take Emy swimming, then all join up for a dinner at her favorite restaurant. 

At 2.28 pm I was sending off some pictures on the computer when the house started to rumble. It was like the whole building was in spin-cycle in the washing machine and something had gone terrible wrong. I knew immediately that it was an earthquake and shouted to Paddy in the next room. We both ran to our front door which is made of metal and thought we would be safe there. But the rumbling had turned into a roaring boil and it was like being inside of a popcorn maker. The noise was deafening. We live on the 13th floor and the house was being shook back and forth and everything was bouncing up and down and crashing on to the floor. All the other earthquakes I have been in (in California) lasted only 10-20-30 seconds. This one didn't want to stop. Paddy shouted that we should try and get out of the house. We were convinced the house was going to come down - working in China for so many years has made us all too sceptical and cynical about how houses are constructed and if the proper methods and materials were used. We both flew down the 13 flights of stairs in our bare feet (there was no time to take anything with us). I was still in my pyjamas. Bits and pieces of cement were falling around us and on every floor we met more people trying to get out. The earthquake finished just after we got out the front door where we met hundreds of other people streaming out of all the buildings around us. It had lasted for a full three minutes. All we could think of after this was to find our kids, our friends and get away from any building as soon as possible. Paddy braved running up 13 flights of stairs again to quickly get our passports, money, shoes, computers and to lock our door which we had left wide open. We had no idea if any large aftershocks would bring the whole house done. All the time he was up there I could see the windows quietly vibrating. It felt like the earth was a living, breathy animal, panting after an enormous exertion. He was gone for about five minutes, when he came down again a large aftershock hit and we all ran out into the streets. 

We quickly bought water and then two bicycles, shops were closing up and people were trying to contact friends and relatives by cellphone. Mobile connections weren't working and the streets were clogged with vehicles and people trying to find each other. Luckily no one was showing panic, even though we have heard that a small number of people in Chengdu leap out ofbuildings in fear and died that way. We made our way to where we could find our friends and children. Luckily everyone was safe and sound. Only then did we learn where the epicenter was -- just outside of the city in the mountains to the NW and that it had been enormous (7.9 magnitude). We also learnt name of towns and cities that I had never heard of: Beichuan, Hanwang, Yingxiu. Quickly we heard that two large schools had collapsed on top of 900 students. 

As time went on the numbers of casualities increased and unspeakable horrors were revealed about what had actually happened.  It is incomprehensible how entire cities can be crushed to rubble within a few seconds.

After the earthquake we have experienced fantastic warmth and generosity from all people around us (thank-you Kim, Johnny, Barry and Carin!) and we have all, Chinese and foreigners alike, gotten to know each a little better and been pulled closer together. I love Sichuan even more today than before and don't want to leave the area. Fun-loving Chengdu isn't the happy-go-lucky city it once was and everyone seems to be suffering from a collective depression, but day by day things get a little better. The Chinese people are incredibly resilient and tough and outside the city everyone is concentrating on getting through each day, minute by minute. It is too painful otherwise. 

 The kids have also been fantastic and seem to be doing all right after a few ups and downs. At the moment they are concentrating on getting through their last two weeks of school. During the actual earthquake they were thankfully outside of their school building doing sports. They felt the earth rumble and shake (it sounded strange they've said) and watched the school clocktower sway back and forth in an odd way, the lightning rod a top whipping frenetically back and forth. They didn't feel scared at that time and their teachers were very calm and responsible. Only afterwards when they joined up with their parents and witnessed all the adults acting scared and weird did they feel fear. Something for me to think about in the next disaster. Up on the 13th floor when the earthquake hit and I could hear the buildings crashing together and our terrace ripping apart, I experienced true, primitive anxiety. I wasn't at all brave, I was terribly scared and realized that I very much like being alive. I was no hero during this time and it taught me a lot about myself and my weaknesses.  

When Emy realized there would be no birthday celebration this day she said "This is the worst birthday of my entire life". In the evening, when we and a hundred plus other people had all gathered together in a garden to spend the night outdoors out of range of potentially falling buildings, Barry Jones got everyone to sing Happy Birthday to her in English and Chinese. It was very moving when we all knew that not so far from the city there were thousands of children lying dead, their parents distraught, searching for them. When Emy and Burton were allowed to drink a lot more soda pop than usual during the first earthquake week Emy said: "This is the best earthquake I've ever had".

 

Written June 2008

Anniversary of May 12th, 2008 Earthquake

Empty house, near Yingxiu May 2009 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Yesterday (blogspot runs on American time I think) was the first anniversary of the Sichuan Earthquake. It was an emotional day for me: For one, my daughter turned double-digit and I felt that time was slipping away and that she was getting too big too soon. (I've hopefully got another 9 years with her before she moves away from home so some comfort there). Secondly, the memories from the earthquake last year are still all too fresh and recently accentuated by our visit through the epicenter at Yingxiu.

Paddy and I (tearfully) watched the documentaries and commemoration on Chinese TV and saw how the government eulogized both the victims and their families but also glorified the party and the government's efforts to save lives and make everything right again. Better to concentrate on the positive and not all there still has to be done. Or all of the people that have fallen between the cracks and aren't reached by the enormous state reconstruction apparatus. Every other picture was one of the flag of the Communist Party and or the seal of the PRC. I suppose no different than the number of American flags that were shown after Katrina or 9-11 (Wenchuan and Katrina however were natural disasters with no political agenda). In Sweden we are more discreet in showing our flag and equating disasters and tragedies too closely or patriotically with our government (even after the 1994 MS Estonia tragedy or the 2004 tsunami). 

Driving through the quake area the other day I sometimes felt like one of those "morbid tourists" that I wrote about on Feb 2. The TV showed them yesterday too, how Chinese busloads and caravans of cars and motorcycles visit Yingxiu and are guided around amongst the still highly visible ruins by the teenagers and young people that survived the earthquake. In the beginning their guides are cheery and strong and tell how boulders the size of small houses rained down upon their heads and how entire mountains slid into and over the city, crushing and smothering everything in its wake. After a while, when things get more personal and they relate what happened to them and their families and the people around them they break down crying and can hardly continue. It is all still too horrible to think about and I wonder how long these young people - just at the beginning of their lives - will have the energy and emotional balance to keep on talking about something so close to the bone. I hope that they will be able to move on eventually to a life that doesn't revolve around the earthquake everyday. But like victims of any huge disaster or tragedy loosing a large portion of your family is something that will alter your life forever. 

As 14.28 crept up on the clock yesterday (the time of the earthquake) I began to feel a little anxious and wanted to have everything in order. I made sure that this year I had already showered and dressed and that I had my shoes on (last year I was still in my pyjamas, lazing about, and that's how I ran out of the house). When 14.28 arrived the commentary on the TV stopped completely and the cameras panned slowing around the epicenter in total silence for one minute. Complete quiet in China is always something particularly peculiar and the effect was very unsettling and moving. It even seemed that the city around me here in Chengdu was quieter than usual, but a look out the window showed me that no, most people were actually going about things as usual, loading cars with goods, bicycling, chatting, talking on their cell phones. 

We spent the evening at the Bookworm participating in the earthquake anniversary benefit. As ever my extreme admiration for Peter Goff, the Bookworm staff and ALL people, too numerous to mention, Chinese and foreign, that have helped out at Sichuan Quake Relief over the past 12 months, finding earthquake victims who have "fallen between the cracks" and helping them in ways both big and small. Within just a day of the earthquake their relief efforts began and they are still going on, with numerous short and long term projects that really make a difference in people's lives. All profits from last night went directly to quake relief projects. (Burton and his band Ze Puppies played too and everyone sang Happy Birthday to Emy, thanks for the yummy cake Kim Dallas!). Last night was also the release of Abigail Washburn's (of Sparrow Quartet fame) and David Liang's CD Afterquake. The CD mixes the actual sounds of the rebuilding with the voices of relocated school children, talking and singing. Truly moving. More here. 

The Sichuan government, sister provinces and cities all over China, and the enormous efforts of all people in the quake areas have also accomplished a truly heroic amount of reconstruction this past year. There is so much to do it just seems so overwhelming...you are all TRULY AMAZING.

Lest we forget: The Wenchuan Earthquake killed up to 90,000 people, injured 400,000 and made 5 million people homeless (5 million is the entire population of Denmark). A tragedy of this proportion can't be put to right over night, work will go on for many, many years so please remember how people still need our help and support. 

Songpan Horse Trek part 1 Chengdu to Songpan via Yingxiu and Wenchuan

All images above from Yingxiu epicenter area ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Who came along on this trip? 24 family and friends and 3 drivers all living in Chengdu. Nationalities? Chinese, American, Swedish, British and French. Languages spoken, heard or passed by on this trip? English, Swedish, French, Chinese, Aba Tibetan, Baima and Qiang. All of our kids go to school together, the age range was: 3 year Sam Goldings to 75 year old Ingrid Morejohn Senior.

After several weeks of planning and organizing (thank-you Ethan G, Catherine P, Mike and Laura Li and of course Emma (Guirong) Li in Songpan for advice, help and support) we finally left Chengdu on May 1st at 6.00 am. We had rented a small bus in Chengdu and despite advice to the contrary our driver Mr Su Wenbo thought that taking the Chengdu - Pixian - Dujiangyan - Yingxiu - Wenchuan - Maoxian route would be the quickest way to reach Songpan. This proved to be a big mistake: May 1st was the beginning of a national holiday and although we made very good time out of Chengdu and past Dujiangyan once we got up into the mountains we quickly got bogged down in the pile-ups that were caused by the one-way traffic that was the only direction allowed because of the extensive road work going on due to the massive devastation caused by 8.0 magnitude May 12th, 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. (Odd days up and even days down). The two private drivers had their driver's licenses confiscated by the local traffic police (a story in itself) but were lucky enough to get them back a few hours later after much hassle, teeth-grinding, threats and diplomacy. 

Aerial view of Yingxiu on May 14, 2008. © Xinhua News Agency

Quickly on from Dujiangyan we began to notice earthquake damage. When we reached the epicenter (1 pm) at Yìngxiù 映秀 it was heartbreaking to see how almost the entire city had been destroyed. It was literally just a gigantic heap of rubble with countless dead most likely still trapped beneath the ruins. Before the earthquake the population was 6906 people, 80% of the town was destroyed, supposedly only one-fifth survived. As the crow flies the epicenter was only 80 km from Chengdu where all of us on this trip had been when the earthquake hit a year ago. Because of the damage and winding roads it had taken us 7 hours to drive here.  

For the rest of the day we witnessed the enormous effort that the local people, government and army had put into repairing the roads, villages, towns and cities. They have quickly pulled their lives back together and everywhere we saw bustling activity, roadwork, temporary housing, new shops and houses built, markets and caravans of trucks delivering food, livestock, tractors, motorcycles, appliances and building material. This work will go on for a very long time, and of course, the greatest benefit is for the people who actually live along the main transport arteries. How the people that live in the high mountain villages above and beyond the Min River are getting along can easily be imagined: very difficult.

We continued on our way and at 2.50 pm reached Wènchuān 汶川 and came to Mào Xiàn 茂县 at 4.00 pm. We were deep into Qiang territory now and the hillsides were green and full of spring blossoms. The Qiang are a separate ethnic group with a population of about 200,000 lively mainly in NW Sichuan. Traditionally they have built beautiful stone houses but these were few in number along the main road. Most were newly painted cement houses but nicely done with pebble mosaic facades, shale siding, trapezoid shaped windows and lovely potted plants. In the late 1980s when I first travelled this road I remember numerous stone houses and even a fair number of stone watchtowers that can be seen all the way across western Sichuan far into eastern Tibet. It began to rain, Mr Su had been driving for almost 12 hours when we reached Diexi Lake, sight of major quake destruction in 1933 (see below). In the late 1980s this lake was full of massive log jams, the Min not being dammed until 2006. Fortunately logging was forbidden in Western Sichuan in the early 1990s. 

Finally at 7.35 pm, with the rain pouring down all around, we pulled into Songpan and the welcome embrace of Emma's Kitchen! Pizza and cold beer all around, nice clean double rooms at the Shunjiang Nianqing Kezhan directly behind and just before midnight the two other cars finally arrive. What a day!!!

Min River:

We followed the Min River (Mín Jiāng 岷江) the entire journey and as every minute passed we went up up up. Chéngdū 成都 is at the bottom (500 m) of the Chengdu Basin. Our destination was Songpan at over 2800 m. The Minjiang is 735 km long and gets it water from the snows of the Minshan Range. The Min is a tributary of the Yangtse which it later joins at Yibin (after passing the world's largest buddha at Lèshān 乐山). The Min is dammed at Zipingpu 紫坪铺水利枢纽 near Dūjiāngyàn 都江堰. 

Earthquake notes along our route: 

On August 16, 1976 a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Songpan-Pingwu (casualities 41). Two large (6.7 and 7.2) aftershocks hit again a few days later. On August 25, 1933 an approximately 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit Diexi in near Maoxian. This earthquake destroyed the town and surrounding villages of Diexi and caused about 9,000 deaths. Diexi itself sank into the landslide dam-created Diexi Lake 叠溪海子 which can today be viewed as the beautiful and placid deep-jade green Diexi Lake close to Songpan.  

The Woman on the Motorcycle

©Shen Qilai/Sinopix

This photograph has haunted me ever since I first saw it. It caught my eye at the hairdressers one day as I was waiting for my turn, lazily looking through crumpled newspapers for something to pass the time.  As I couldn't read the text I thought at first that it was a happily married couple, obviously fond of each other because of the way the wife is holding onto her husband so tightly. Then suddenly I realized that she was dead and that the man had tied his wife to his back to keep her from falling off the motorcycle. I went icy cold and couldn't stop staring at the picture, at the same time embarrassed because everyone around me had obviously seen the picture too and had been discussing it. I asked the "little boys" (the guys who wash your hair) what was going on and all they said was "He's taking her home". 

When I saw the photograph two weeks had passed since the Sichuan earthquake and I was still stunned by the enormous tragedy that  had occurred and by the fear I had felt during the earthquake. I'd seen countless photographs of horrible mangled buildings, piles of small children crushed underneath houses, a lone foot in a high-heeled shoe sticking out from underneath a boulder that was so ludicrously big it seemed like a crude joke in a cartoon. All of them had moved me to tears but when I looked at them I knew what I was looking at, I knew what had happened to them. I was unprepared for the woman on the motorcycle. 

A few weeks ago a friend asked "Have you heard about the guy carrying his dead wife?" I sat bolt upright. I had been thinking about this picture for almost ten months and wished that I had torn out the article from the newspaper. I had no idea that the picture was so famous. I thought perhaps I was the only one who had reacted so strongly and that the photograph was only one of many hundreds of earthquake images that each and everyone could win a prize in a photojournalistic competition. How wrong I was, the photograph had gone out all over China and the world and was famous. It was actually a color photograph: the woman is wearing a bright pink jacket that immediately grabs your attention. You can see clearly how her arms hug her husband, but you also see that she is slumped against his back, strapped tightly to him  and that her socks are full of blood, her feet hanging just above the ground. The husband is looking back at her with a frown on his face. Sorrow, worry,  shock, disdain? 

This is the problem, the dilemma, the sheer power and the magic of a photograph. It can sway the viewer in so many ways, in so many directions. The viewer is then left to interpret it in her own personal way, from her own personal experiences. The first reaction one has to a photograph is often difficult to dislodge. At first I didn't want to hear what I now found out about the couple on the motorcycle. That the man actually was considered an unpleasant character, that he was forced by his in-laws to collect his wife on his motorcycle, that they wanted him to take his responsibility for her; that he was so unpopular no one wanted to help him, that he neglected his father, had considered divorcing his wife (she gambled too much and had been playing mahjong when she died), that they were actually incompatible, fought frequently, and that he had already remarried, only six months after her death. Or maybe (as he was first portrayed by the national media), they loved each other very much, they were devoted to each other, he had gone to collect her body to take her back home and had dressed her in her favorite pink jacket; that yes he had found love again but that he thought about his first wife everyday and honored her memory. The newspapers had called the image "a husband's final ride home with his wife".

The earthquake killed indiscriminately. The media however chose to "spin" the picture in a certain way, first in one direction, then in another. I saw only the image and never knew the "story" until later. In the end does it matter who the people in the photograph are or what kind of character they have? What do you think? All we actually know for certain is that the body on the motorcycle is dead.

Ghost images of quake zone: Photographer Thomas H. Hahn

©Thomas H. Hahn 

Thomas H. Hahn has recently posted a number of docu-images on his Zenfolio website about how Wenchuan, Yingxiu and Dujiangyan look today (images taken Jan 21, 2009). The images show eerily quiet ghost towns and massive destruction, the only people in the photographs being two men dressed in funeral garb. His introduction however states that Wenchuan is surprisingly full of life and feverish reconstruction, welcome news for all. 

Hahn's Zenfolio website is otherwise a helpful source of historical photography of old China as well as Thomas H. Hahn's own photography of a changing China. As Hahn states in the opening page: "The main subject area is China and that country's rather rapid transformation from a rural to an urban-centered society". Hahn has been travelling regularly in China since the early 1980s. 

(Side note: See my article about "thanatourism" posted 090202) 

Sichuan earthquake possibly man-made?

The Telegraph had an interesting (and horrifying) article yesterday (090203/Malcolm Moore/Shanghai ) about the possibility of the May 12th, 2008 Sichuan earthquake possibly being caused by a large dam that lies very near the fault line.

The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.

Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.

Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was "very likely" that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster.

Article continues here...

Morbid tourism in earthquake zone

Hanwang, Sichuan ©Paddy Booz

Shortly after the May 12, 2008 earthquake in Sichuan we heard of local Chengdu residents going up to the earthquake area just to rubberneck at destroyed buildings and surviviors camped out near the ruins of their previous lives. Indeed, so many people drove out to Mianyang and Dujiangyan (two of the closest areas near Chengdu hit by the earthquake) that their cars were blocking the roads and they had to be shooed away by the police. Admittedly for many it was  a way of trying to fathom what on earth had happened. The earthquake had come so suddenly and caused such enormous tragedy that Sichuan and a lot of China were in a state of shock. Seeing with your own eyes buildings that were leaning on their sides and whole villages completely obliterated in just a few seconds is something difficult for the mind and heart to comprehend, so many understandably sought answers by visiting in person. 

Others just came to gawk and take pictures, like tourists. This kind of voyeuristic tourism is well-studied and has many names: "morbid tourism", "dark tourism", "thanatourism", "disaster tourism", "grief tourism", etc. I'm the first to admit that there is a kind of magnetic appeal to places where something horrible has happened. I remember on a visit to New York friends being fascinated by an otherwise completely normal looking house that was the site of the Amityville Haunting on Long Island (which later evolved into the Amityville Horror book and movie). A large industry has grown up around this kind of tourism: Tourists visit the tunnel in Paris where Princess Diana died in a car crash. They join Jack the Ripper tours in London and visit The Killing Fields in Cambodia, the London Dungeon, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ground Zero, Pompeii and Khao Lak in Thailand. It also seems that the farther we distance ourselves from a tragedy the more legitimate (and less voyeuristic) a disaster site becomes: war graveyards, tombs, battlefields, execution sites in the distant past are labeled as "history tours" . Many make the distinction between a natural disaster and a disaster caused by man himself, but it is death, destruction, pain and suffering that is the common drawing card for them all.

China is no exception although many of the sites are clothed in the legitimacy of history, revolution and political legitimacy: Museum of the Nanjing Massacre, the battlefields of the Three Kingdoms, the route of the Long March. Everyday tourists gather around the Well of the Pearl Concubine in the Forbidden City, seemingly trying to figure out how such a small opening could swallow up a concubine. The questions going through their heads are easy to imagine: Was she chopped into pieces first or was she drowned in the well itself? 

...and now finally we have regular tourism to the earthquake areas of Sichuan as seen by this notice in the China Daily:

Holiday revives tourism in quake-hit Sichuan

(Xinhua)

Updated: 2009-02-01 19:01

The provincial tourism office on Sunday announced 16.5 million tourist visits in the holiday, which ended Saturday, up 21.9 percent from the Spring Festival week last year. The Donghekou Earthquake Relics Park, established to commemorate last year's May 12 earthquake, in Qingchuan County welcomed more than 64,300 domestic and overseas tourists during the holiday.

The park contains the ruins of Donghekou Village, where all but 300 of more than 1,400 villagers failed to survive a devastating landslide triggered by the earthquake.

Earthquake tours in the county attracted more than 100,000 visitors in the holiday, which helped revive small businesses, said a tourist office official.

Many tourists visited small restaurants set up by survivors in temporary settlements in Beichuan County, one of the worst affected areas, and were drawn to countryside tours to see farmhouses built after the earthquake.

Source: China Daily online

Chinese New Year 2009 Rat to Ox

Burning offerings for the dead on New Year's Eve  ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Today is Chinese New Year's Eve, the last year of "my year", the Year of the Rat. I have worn something red for an entire year. Tomorrow, on the first day of the Year of the Ox,  I will be able to lay it aside as I'll no longer need it's extra protection. They say that when the rat year comes around the naughty rat drags in lots of bothersome things into the year. The ox will have a hard time cleaning up the mess but will hopefully succeed in the end, hardworking animal that it is. To be honest it has been a VERY tumultuous year in China: winter ice storms, riots, train crashes, earthquakes and milk scandals but also wonderful things like the  enormous outpouring of help for the earthquake victims, the camaraderie and warmth the crisis created and the magic, pomp and FUN of the Olympics.  

The passing of a year is a good time to reflect back on both good times and bad and send close friends and loved ones a special thought. In this way I would like to remember a few of my dearest friends who have been very sick this year and also one that so very untimely passed away. I think of you often and wish you a very Happy New Year!