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Melinda Liu
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Aug 5, 2008 06:48 PM
Jennifer Conrad reports on continuing post-quake relief efforts in Sichuan:
British industrial designer Luke Cardew was traveling in France when
he received a voicemail from a friend: "China needs shelters." The
Sichuan earthquake had just struck. For Cardew, who works out of
Shanghai as a freelance designer, the disaster provided an incredible
opportunity for him to use his skills to help people.
By all accounts, the efforts of Chinese volunteers and workers have
been tremendous, but sometimes foreigners have provided specialized
knowledge
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Jonathan Ansfield
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Jun 29, 2008 05:42 AM
Last week I was in Sichuan, where post-quake reconstruction is just beginning but the sense
of utter ruin has faded fast.
The down-and-out, albeit, are a relatively small and hard-to-reach
minority: I met an ER nurse who couldn't forgive herself for not having
saving a soul, for instance, and an eight-year-old boy who'd barely
spoken since seeing his teacher consumed in the debris. But the civic
spirit I saw in action disinfected some of the cynicism I carried going
in. This was particularly the case at the displacement camps I visited,
where the mood blended forbearance, levity and melancholy. Imagine an
encampment of Deadheads on tour - without the Dead.
The quake leveled not only towns and villages but momentarily, the
class consciousness of an increasingly stratified society. It's been
many a decade since so many people in China found themselves lumped
together in such sorry straits, and perhaps never before have so many
across the country genuinely banded together to provide a safety net.
Perversely put, Sichuanese can take solace in living out the
socialistic ideal of the People's Republic. Not that the damage was
egalitarian or equitable. The Big One mostly hit the ill-prepared
underclasses up in the mountains, much as Katrina submerged their
American counterparts below sea-level. But I'd take life in a Sichuan
displacement camp over a FEMA trailer park any day. Here, at least, it
signified development.
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 27, 2008 06:40 PM
Everyone's been struck by the continuing altruism and idealism of young Chinese who flocked to quake-devastated Sichuan province to help, any which way they can. For some Americans the scene evokes almost a kind of latter-day Chinese Woodstock. Jennifer...
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Jonathan Ansfield
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Jun 25, 2008 06:37 PM
Chinese typically root on heroes and peers alike with the cheer jia you! , the rough equivalent of “Come on!” or “Let’s go!”. In the lead-up to the Olympics, with national pride under assault from all sorts of natural calamity and human rights kerfuffle,...
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Jonathan Ansfield
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Jun 15, 2008 08:40 PM
When a snow disaster cracks the land, When Tibet splittists disrupt the torch relay, When an earthquake shakes every single person’s soul... No matter what hardships hit, [We’ll] never leave any countryman stranded. Go China! Stand up straight! Inspiring...
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Manuela Zoninsein
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Jun 12, 2008 05:23 PM
After spending eight days in quarantine, eight visiting pandas from the Wolong Panda Reserve in Sichuan Province were presented to the public at Beijing Zoo last Saturday, June 7. Though their tenure had been planned for months in advance of the Beijing...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 10, 2008 05:58 PM
In China as elsewhere, a grassroots movement hasn't arrived until it can claim a t-shirt or two. The explosion of volunteerism and pride after the tragic Sichuan earthquake has triggered a wave of t-shirts. Jennifer Conrad, who works in Beijing, explains:...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 6, 2008 05:03 PM
Ma Jian, one of the most influential modern Chinese writers, has published a new novel that starts with the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989. After beginning his career as a photojournalist in the 1970s, Ma quit that job, t ravelled...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 5, 2008 09:47 AM
With nearly 18,000 earthquake victims still missing, China's
police have mobilized an unprecedented forensic identification campaign
to help survivors learn the fate of missing relatives. The Ministry of
Public Security in Beijing organized crime scene investigators, police
photographers and other forensic experts into 22 teams that fanned out
across the quake zone. Their mission: to process unidentified corpses
and establish a DNA database that relatives can consult in the months,
or years, to come.
The scale of the task is huge. "We need more technicians and more
chemicals used in DNA analysis. That's our biggest difficulty right
now," says Wang Qinghong, vice director of the Sichuan province public
security
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 3, 2008 05:07 PM
Some readers said they experienced difficulty trying to access an article my colleague Mary and I wrote about the "Tiananmen Effect." This is the 19th anniversary of the crackdown. I'm pasting the article here: The Tiananmen Effect The Sichuan quake has...
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Quindlen Krovatin
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Jun 1, 2008 06:46 PM
Sunday, May 25 was a rare day in Beijing -- sunny, warm, clear, beautiful -- and its clarity brought home the enormity of the Sichuan quake. Out at 3 Shadows Photography Art Center, the grass was emerald green, the sky was sapphire blue, and an eclectic...
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Jonathan Ansfield
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May 31, 2008 10:40 PM
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Jonathan Ansfield
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May 30, 2008 08:52 PM
Google the Chinese words for “earthquake + school building + collapse” here nowadays and you get nothing but a white screen and a warning: 搜索结果可能涉及不符合相关法律法规和政策的内容，无法显示。 Which means: “The search results may involve contents that do not accord with relevant...
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Melinda Liu
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May 29, 2008 11:46 PM
What made actress Sharon Stone apologize ? Many assume she was compelled by her five-year cosmetics advertising contract with Dior, or her desire to sell more "Casino" cinema tickets to a population totally enamored of Los Vegas. Market forces -- and...
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Melinda Liu
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May 27, 2008 02:19 PM
The loss of so many children in the May 12 earthquake -- estimates range from 5,500 to 10,000 or more -- has prompted the Chinese government to announce a new exception to its "one-child" family planning policy. Applied mainly among urban couples, the...
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