Posts Tagged ‘Sichuan Earthquake’
Li Dafen of Tongkou village
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on July 28th, 2010
Originally posted on China Digital Times
All around the countryside of Beichuan County, there are signs of massive reconstruction. People are busy: building their own houses, working as hired hands in neighbors’ half finished new homes, refurnishing or earning some extra cash in road construction. Sights on the road are telling of the magnitude of the work being done here: motorways rebuilt, dams repaired, electric grid reinstalled, schools and hospitals and government offices – usually the first to be reconstructed and the most ostentatious – and homes, everywhere, solid and spacious by rural standards.
In the little township of Chunshui (春水), a weekly market is in full swing, offering, apart from the usual selection of vegetables, geese and chickens, piles of cheap household necessities. At the edge of town temporary houses still stand, now deserted and partly covered with an overgrowth of weeds, as former residents are moving into new permanent homes. The work is not yet done: The road from Anchang (安昌) is still barely passable and at the new school electricians and craftsmen work feverishly to prepare everything in time for the start of the school year in September. The overall atmosphere is that of optimism and hopefulness for a fresh start. Onward along the road, everywhere villages are seen, all with newly constructed two story houses surrounded by corn and rice fields at the edge of forested green hills. Only here and there the road shows signs of the terrible upheaval in boulders thrown at the edge of the Jin river, or a bare mountainside where rolling earth and crushing rocks buried a whole village once, not three years ago.
Up the road on the way to the ruined city of Beichuan, now a memorial site, lies the small one street townlet of Tongkou（通口镇）, the smallest and poorest of the towns in Beichuan county – really little more than a village in the shadow of a local holy Daoist mountain. Here, too people are at work:: Some houses along the one street are already occupied while other families are still hard at work on their new homes. One of them is Li Dafen, 54, violently mixing cement for plastering on recently erected walls. She is among the last households in the village to be moving in, living in the meantime in the dark and exposed basement of her uncompleted apartment.
Born in an even smaller and very remote village in the Beichuan area, Li attended only two years of elementary school. She came to Tongkou as a young bride to live in her husband’s house more than 30 years ago and had her two children here.
Even before the quake tore down her home, Li was no stranger to calamity. Her Daughter died some eight years ago from internal bleeding early in her pregnancy. Less than two years later, her husband died suddenly of heart failure. (A new hospital was built in town with donations from Shandong province, and seems to be quite active though not as well equipped as propaganda would have us believe. It might help make tragedies like Li’s less common in the future).
She was left to support her remaining son by herself, which she did by going “Da gong” – getting odd jobs in a series of eastern cities. News of the earthquake caught her cleaning hotel rooms in Nanjing, and she rushed home only to find it gone, utterly destroyed following the quake and floods from a “quake lake”. Fortunately her son, now twenty, was in a nearby town at the time and was not hurt – He now lives with her at the basement when not looking for a job in town. Late last year, Li went east once more, to Beijing, again working to earn money for the renovation. she says she got 29,000 RMB in compensation, to which the government added the laying of foundations for all the new houses in Tongkou – now built according to a master plan and supposedly quake resistant. Walls, ceiling, roof, flooring, plumbing and installing of doors and windows are left for everyone to do according to their own design and means. Li’s means are meager, but she nevertheless has grand plans for the place:
“People are nice enough here but they don’t help each other much. They all have their own worries and cares. People suggested that I’ll leave, with my husband no longer around and my son not wanting to live in such a small place, My family in the village suggested that I’ll move in with them, or that I’ll go east for good, but I want to rebuild my home. This is all I had left after their deaths and this I want back. This is my home – If I leave I’ll never have another one”.
And so she stays. And is quite optimistic that her home will be done in two months or so. “You have to come here again next year and see the house” She says. She might not be here next year though: after building and furnishing the house, the modest compensation fund will be all but spent. She then plans to go “Da gong” again.
The roads bear signs still but it's not all tragic: The area is very beautiful and worth a visit
Master plan – survivors of Beichuan get new homes -or not
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on July 25th, 2010
Living in a tent when building a new house near Beichuan
(This piece was originally posted on China Digital Times)
In his village of Yuchuanshan (玉川山), Mr. Du, is leisurely sipping tea on the porch of his new home, watching his grandchildren play among fruit trees.
The scene hasn’t always been that ideal: The family of seven has only recently moved into this spacious new home after living in a tent in their own front yard for more than a year following the collapse of their old home in the 2008 earthquake. But all is well now, Du declares. The compensation he got for his lost home, about 16,000 RMB, wasn’t really enough, considering that expenses and the cost of living are going up quickly in the recovered area. Still, getting to spend the evening of his life in peace and serenity on his own land is something one like Mr. Du surely appreciates. He is full of praise for his neighbors, his sons and especially the volunteers from around China and the world who came to help Beichuan in its dire times. All is well now.
Du & granddaughter
Some 25 kilometers from there, however, all is not well. The town of Leigu (擂鼓镇), only about 8 kilometers from Beichuan city, was one of the hardest hit, the whole town virtually flattened, and survivors from the population of 18,000 people (including the population of some 30 attached villages), were all left homeless. Where the town once stood there is now a refugee camp: rows upon rows of “disaster relief houses”. The thin walled structures have served the people well, but they are meant to be temporary and two years of use are apparent. The houses are rundown but in Leigu, most are still occupied, with thousands still waiting for a more permanent solution. All around, construction of farm houses, apartment buildings and public facilities such as schools and hospitals is in motion.
Street in Leigu remporary housing site
Wei Yonghong, a farmer from near Leigu is one of those in waiting. Her 10 months old daughter, like many other children, was born in a makeshift hospital in the camp. Her older son started his schooling in a UNICEF supported school there last year. When disaster fell, Wei was out, working her fields. Her in-laws managed to get the boy out of a collapsing house, but she took almost 24 hours to find that out, all the while trying to make her way home among shattered buildings and rubble. She now prepares for what could be a third winter in the camp if she’s not relocated soon. The family still hasn’t been notified when they will get a new house. “We want to go back to the village to rebuild our house ourselves, but the government said no, there is a master-plan so we have to wait for them to approve construction. We still don’t know when that’ll be. We’ve been waiting a long time without anyone telling us anything. Will you write about it”?
With many complaints of belated compensation and of being ignored by authorities, Wei still counts herself among the lucky ones: Homeless, Jobless, facing an uncertain future and forever haunted by distressful memories, she nevertheless has her family still whole and mostly unharmed. Her neighbors from both sides, as well as her cousin, all lost children in the earthquake.
Remains of houses in Leigu
At another row of shabby temporary houses, Jiang Qinyong tells a similar story: Her village, too, is not yet approved for reconstruction (it was located at the site of the camp itself). Watching over her daughter and several other children, Jiang, whose husband was badly injured and spent months in a hospital in Chengdu, is in a good mood, like her neighbors, who all try to keep themselves busy in the routine of transitory existence. Old women busy themselves with keeping tiny plots of arable land, thus helping to feed their families. “Before, we used to grow much of our food ourselves, but now we need to buy everything in the marker, and prices are rising all the time” Jiang complains. She says the hardest aspect of camp life is personal hygiene. Showers and toilets are provided, but are crowded in the evening and uncomfortable for families with small kids.
Li Yinjin
It is hardest, maybe, for the old and the disabled, of which a smiling a amiable Li Yinjin is one. The blind woman, aged 70, was alone in her home when the earthquake hit. Feeling her way out she was then found and brought to safety by a neighbor. She too is still waiting to receive compensation and a relocation plan, living in the meantime at a 14 square meters room together with her son and two orphaned grandsons. The son’s wife died in Beichuan town, he himself coming back home from Jiangsu province, where he was working in construction. Like many of the men and some of the women, he now tries to get employed within the region: opportunities seem abundant with so much construction going on, but somehow many still complain they have a hard time to finding a steady job or sufficient income.
makeshift furniture shop in Leigu
The clearest distinction seems to be between those still waiting, Like Jiang, Wei and Li, and those like Du who already have a home, or even those with only a clear relocation schedule. The later, feeling the worst is now behind them, are in high-spirit, making many plans and frequenting the many furniture shops that have sprung up at the edge of the camp. “Come visit again this winter”, warm invitations are repeatedly being extended. “By then, we could drink tea in our new home”. By then, Wei Yonghong’s baby girl will be taking her first steps, most likely on a grassy path between trailer-houses.
Promotion
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on July 24th, 2010
dancer in Tongkou village
Something you wouldn’t expect to see in a poor village somewhere in Sichuan. The girl from Chengdu is showing off for a promotion event of a company that sells solar panels. Since everyone around has a new home, they hope to sell many panels and found the market big enough to come all the way over.
Bits & pieces from Beichuan
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on July 21st, 2010
Building a road in Beichuan
- Most striking here is how resilient people are. They have many grievances – and many scars, but their fortitude, resourcefulness and capacity of joy are impressive.
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- Many of the complaints have to do with the price of stuff. With so much construction, so many newcomers in the area and so many people forced to purchase almost everything anew at the same time, inflation here runs much higher than the national average. Compensation entitlement, naturally, was determined before this minor boom and did not take inflation into account.
- The town of Anchang was less severely affected, thus replacing Beichuan as the urban center for the region. It resulted in a strange boom: even housing prices have gone up as many of the more affluent among Beichuan’s residents rented flats in Anchang until their new homes are ready. Also, I counted some half a dozen new hotels. Bit of an absurd consider there are still camps of temporary shelters for the homeless right in the middle of town. Anchang also shows that old Chinese curse, the all surpassing need to get face: At a glnace Anchang’s main street is all newly built, and this is how officials and other visitors see it when they hurry through, getting the impression the county is well recovered. It only takes a bit more than a glance to discover that much of this new construction is merely new fronts for old buildings that survived the quake. Just to clarify: I’m not saying reconstruction in Beichuan is all fake, or that the effort made isn’t impressive, because it is, but this is curious.
New building in Anchang
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- In the little poor village of Tongkou there is a small temple for Guanyin, goddess of mercy. due to the mysterious way fault lines work the temple, along with few buildings around it, survived when nearly all other buildings in town collapsed. Thus, Guanyin was the one providing shelter to the shocked survivors in the first horrific few days until help arrived. Some old women in Tongkou consider this a miracle. Others are more sceptical.
Buddha watches over rebuilt Tongkou
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- Still in Tongkou: A city of Shandong Province donated to the building of a new hospital and the reconstruction of homes. They also left Tongkou with a new town-square. This little piece of urbanization looks somewhat out of place in a farming community, but it is flat and dry and being made useful as a surface for drying grain.
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Last from Tongkou: A farmer named Li went to Beijing last year to earn some cash for rebuilding her home. She worked at a hotel washing dishes and said she had not left to building for two months for fear of getting lost or arrested. She was paid 30 RMB a day. Her neighbor Ms Tang also went to Beijing last year but had a very different experience: She was with a tour group visiting Tiananmen, The Forbidden City and other fine sites of our fair town. Reminder to self: Even among the poor, there are haves and have-nots, sometimes living yards from each other. The difference between relative poverty and abject one is felt more sharply, perhaps, than the one between rich and poor.
City of the dead
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on July 17th, 2010
And now let us enter the city of death “现在，让我们走j进《死城》(From a poem by Liao Yiwu, a son of Sichuan)
“So you’ve been there today? It’s too clean now. You can’t really imagine how it was back then” (Chen, a hotel proprietor in Anchang, to where survivors from Beichuan are being relocated)
Beichuan, Sichuan. The town that is now known locally as “Lao Beichuan”, old Beichuan. To tourists it is known as “Sichuan earthquake memorial hall”. Buses go there from an improvised ticket office few kilometers away and leave when full. They get full quicly, with visitors from all over China wishing to pay their respects. Tickets are 13 Yuan.
Beichuan was right at the epicenter of the 12.05.2008 quake and was almost completely destroyed. The town will not be rebuilt in its previous location but moved some 30 Kilometers south. The site of old Beichuan is now for all intention and purposes, a tourist attraction. It seems carefully design to extract sympathy and sorrow, but not so deep as to put visitors off their plans to go on and visit the Jiuzaiguo nature reserve up north from here.
But I am being cynical. The site of Beichuan is carefully cept and very respectful. You can first see the ruined town from the road above, then the tour bus will take you down, and a young guide walks a silent group in a circular morbid path. Here is the collapsed building of the local government, the once lovely Beichuan Grand Hotel, and a vocational school that buried more than a hundred students and teachers, but whose basketball court seem barely damaged. Strange what catches your eye.
Also catching the eye are the street cleaners, dutifully doing their job in a town that no longer has streets. one of them, carefully sweeping leaves from the road, to keep everything clean for the visitors. Beichuan is an open museum now: behind the low fences are the exhibits : stone slabs, iron polls, electric cables, mattresses, kitchenware, washing machines, everything that makes a home. Everything that can tell the story of an inconceivable tragedy. Within the fences, however, facilities must be kept neat for museum goers’ sake.
I look at the street cleaner who looks back with expression that invites no enquiries.
There seems to be reproach in her eyes, but maybe it’s just because I feel reproached anyway. Like an intruder. Some of her friends tend the grass over what was the foundation to a new glitzy shopping mall – a very hopeful enterprise in this environment. Construction of the mall has just begun when nature handed its deadly blow, and the pit became a mass grave for the thousands who needed to be buried in haste. Tourists stand here in silence for a minute or two, some shed tears. Then, we all get back on the bus. On the way back to the dispatching point, some eight kilometers away, The road passes a camp of temporary houses, still inhabited more than two years later. But this is no place for tourists to visit. On what life is like there, in the next post
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Turning grief into strength
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on June 30th, 2010
It worked wonderfully well at Beichuan in 2008: Both China and the world were justly impressed with the government quick response as well as with Wen Jiabao’s grandfatherly manner. Comparisons were made to the sleepy, birthday cake infested response of the Bush administration at the time when hurricane Katrina washed over New-Orleans. And, by comparison at least China look very well indeed, tofu buildings aside.
It was still OK when the same “massive mobilization of all resources to help a disaster area” was applied in Yushu this year, and maybe still passable when grandpa Wen made his visit to the drought areas.
But annual floods and mudslides, I dunno. They just don’t seem enough to unite/mobilize the nation. You can almost hear the lack of enthusiasm when listening to CCTV reports, seriously, it gets past the censor.
Since the three gorges dam isn’t due to break down for another five or even ten years, a search should start for a cause worthy of a nationwide campaign.
I’m afraid at some point, unless a war of some kind breaks, it would be necessary to pull a Chernobyl.
A very real shanzhai
Posted by: Rachel in Stories from the Countryside on February 24th, 2009
Farmer Zhao Tianyu filming a documentry. Photo by Huang Ying
So much has been written recently about the whole Shanzhai phenomenon, it’s easy to forget there are still some 地道山寨, or actual mountain fortresses out there. Just recently I came across the story of few such secluded villages in Sichuan province, who survived the earthquake and are being rebuilt.
I first heard about this project from my friend Geng Dong, a fantastic wildlife photographer working for the environmental NGO 山水 (Shan-Shui, mountain & water). The organisation (part of Conservation International) has been doing some research and educational fieldwork in five of Sichuan’s nature reserves for about five years.
The reserves, as well as the nearby villages, took a severe hit when the quake came, and the people of Shan-Shui were trying to find ways to both enhance the recovery of the reserves, and help the locals. Well, just like any other NGO in China, I suppose.
But what is unlike any of the other stories and reports I’ve heard or read or seen trying to narrate the Sichuan tragedy and the rebuilding efforts is that Shan Shui came up with a really great way to let the villagers tell their own stories – they gave them video cameras, some training, and the opportunity to make their own short films. thus was created “我们是主角“ – “We are the lead actors”, a collection of ten short films by amateur filmmakers/ Sichuanese farmers. You can watch all of them here (Chinese and a lot of Sichuanhua. No English subtitles, but there isn’t much talking in many of the films. They’re working on an English version and will appreciate some help if anyone has the time and linguistic skills).
The subjects for the films vary - rebuilding of a community centre, village meetings to discuss compensations and rehabilitation options, volunteers, road reconstruction, forest rangers in action, school activities, devastating flood, and more. One even dedicated the whole film to the life of birds around his village, with not a hint of the recent disaster. It’s not what you’d expect, it’s not really sensational, but hey, it’s his film!
In fact, none of the films is incredibly dramatic. They describe everyday’s life of ordinary people who have just happened to be going through a very extraordinary experience. They may never win any film critics award. They might, in fact, be boring to some. Personally, I find them fascinating.
Most of what we hear from Sichuan is either government propaganda or horror stories about corrupt officials and wronged parents who lost everything. Not that those stories aren’t important, but it’s just so refreshing to see and hear what some people in Sichuan are really going through, what are their interests and concerns and hopes, it’s so rarely you get a look through such people’s eyes.
ShanShui also made a short documentary on how the films were made, I’ll try to get permission and upload it here tomorrow.
Links:
Article in Hebrew if you’re readers of obscure languages or just want to see more photos
Geng Dong’s Blog (Chinese)