Things are getting back to normal, with the standard 9-6 going on at work. The suppliers have not been affected by the earthquake, but are still late, which is at least standard practice in industrial supply chains. The flat needs a few bits of touch up, to cover the cracks and repaint.
Thinking of trying some flexi-time at work, perhaps taking two half-days, since I’m rather stuck in a rut at work, but also to mug up on Chinese and on database design. Luckily the boss has been v. understanding and is willing to give it a try to see how it goes.
Part of this evening was spent in the defence of our kitchen, having been threatened with an invasion of tiny ‘smaller than mosquito’ flies/bugs/midges. After unwisely leaving the fluorescent lights on and the window open with the gauze screen cover closed, allowing in the outside air, but attracting hundreds of interested spectators, straining at the fences like Beatles fans at the Hollywood Bowl. Action was required, and Chuck Norris was unavailable. I simply had to shut the windows, which would involve sliding one half-window to the left. This would in turn trap the midges between screen and window, but I would deal with that when the time came. In the manner of elite sporting heroes, I visualised opening the right-hand half-window for the split second necessary to be able to push the left-hand half back to slide back into its closed position and therefore shut out the remainder of the alien hordes. My handiwork was impressive. In the time taken for this nifty operation, a mere 150 fly-ettes entered and were attracted to the pristine painted plaster to the right of the stove. Perhaps they made a bee line for it.
This affront to property rights was too much. My honour and personal space must be defended. I challenged them to a duel, respecting most of the rules, apart from that minor subsection that states that in terms of being equipped with a weapon, both parties should be of equal status. My chosen instrument of death was the hoover. This was promptly fetched and, after 10 paces, I plugged in, took aim and with a cry of ‘touche!’ I sucked the first of the posse into a dusty passage to a dizzy, whirring, spinning demise, which may at least inspire one of the great insect film directors to make a staggering horror scene. Instead of ‘Volcano,’ ‘Airport,’ or ‘Towering Inferno,’ the great blockbuster in the buzz-ins next summer could be ‘Suction Tube of Death,’ or ‘Plastic Pipe of Doom,’ ‘Just when you thought it was safe to head towards the kitchen lights…,’ ‘Janet, don’t worry, it’s only a window. There are hundreds of other bugs there. It’ll be just fine. Don’t listen to those scare stories. Besides, it’ll be a whole lot of fun, cruising the screen and we can have a flutter around the kitchen. My brother’s been teaching me the loop-the-loop.’ ‘But Jimmy, I don’t like it. Mom says the bright lights are addictive. Everyone says they’re harmless fun, and they can deal with them, but then they just can’t resist them.’ ‘Aw Janet, don’t be such a larva! It’s just for fun, and we’ll be back home in no time.’ ‘Oh, I suppose, just this once…’
We know what happens in the end, after scenes of infectious partying happiness, a group of daredevils go too far, getting through the hole in the screen, ‘last one through’s a coward!’, and then, after the dazzling abundance of new surfaces to explore, and great grease stains to low-fly over, and a couple of stunt flying tricks, a strange whirring noise makes their thousands of eyes look left and right in a slightly worried way, accompanied by quietly eerie and/or unnerving music. Their concern is turned up to 11 as Brian seems to have disappeared from the giant virgin expanse of white plastered wall the swarm was perched on, feeling adventurous and rather pleased with themselves. ‘I didn’t see him go back through the screeeee…,’ goes the next, as the hoover tube approaches and applies its pan-galactic strength tractor beam. The second victim’s immediate neighbour is the next to lack the time to announce, ‘we have lift off,’ although some towards the edges of the wall are mumbling, ‘Huston, we have a problem,’ and, ‘Maybe staying in tonight and doing some cursor tracking on a computer screen would have been better tonight,’ ‘Perhaps if I stay still, it won’t notice me,’ and, ‘I can just hear Janet’s Mom saying, “I told you so, but those young’uns never listen,”‘. Soon, the group of bugs are taking part in a community performance of, “CERN particle accelerator,” in which the part of ‘Scientist’ and ‘Lab technician’ are already cast. The last words of one of the participants are, ‘So this is almost what bungee jumping is like…’ The director cuts to a group of three bugs, trembling, hidden in a spot just behind the gas pipe, from where they can see their friends being launched upwards in a gruesome, Logan’s Run style entertainment. In an affectionate tribute to Bambi, one of three midges is cracking up, eventually screaming, ‘It’s going to get us all!!! We’re going to die!’ whilst the two invertebrate friends with some sort of backbone try to calm their colleague, ‘Just stay still and we’ve got a good chance…’ With a terrified, ‘I can’t take it any more!!’ the be-looned midge springs up, breaking cover, instantly attracting the mobile black hole which has been bereaving hundreds of flies, watching from outside the now closed kitchen window. The panic stricken bug is rapidly out of its misery in a whirlpool of tragic effeciency, not knowing that hide-out of the two remaining six-legged aeronauts has now been tagged on the attacker’s mental Google Earth screen, and they are being inexorably zoomed in at… [Close up of the whites of many many eyes and twelve trembling legs. An image of a gigantic pipe is reflected in the eyes...] Javier Bardem is to wield the deadly weapon, almost reprising his role, in ‘No Country for Old M… [that's enough. Ed.]
Loki and Kocka are suffering with the heat and with the flitting of the birdies outside, who (we like to think) unknowingly tempt the boys with their twittering, and whose dipping and rising flights provide excellent eyeball movement syncronisation exercises for our cats. We are sure they will never need specs.
This is a pic of a yawning Loki on the window sill in our kitchen.
Kirsten wrote this.
On Sunday, June 1st 30-ish volunteers loaded up trucks, cars, and buses to head 3 hours north of Chengdu to a town called Lou Shui. On the way to Luo Shui, you might not know a 7.9 earthquake killed 70,000 people, left millions homeless, and an area the size of Iceland to rebuild; Chengdu bustles along, the farmers till their fields and the sun shines golden in an unusually bright blue sky. Then as if by magic, you cross a river. You might notice that the bridge that spans the river has a section blocked off. If you look as you pass, you’ll see a gaping hole. You begin to see houses that are cracked, but they look old and poor, so the cracking can be explained away by poverty. Driving further along, neighborhoods begin to look like
demolition sites. But why, you wonder, would anyone demolish a neighborhood? And then you come to a town where the buildings are now fist sized pieces of rubble, and brightly coloured tents sprout forth like an oddly shaped Lewis Carroll garden.
And so the volunteers unloaded the trucks, buses, and cars at the first of 4 sites. At the first stop 400 children waited with barely controlled excitement, for their Children’s Day surprise. Children’s Day in China is a bit like having Christmas in June. The volunteers came bearing gifts -badminton sets, balls, cars, dolls, dress up, books… There was even a rag tag group of musicians with a drum and guitar, and a random Frenchman who encouraged the kids to jump and dance. With so many children who have been living in tents for 3 weeks it was difficult to maintain control in the face of unabated excitement. After 45 minutes the volunteers departed, sweat-soaked and grinning, for stop number 2.
Stops number 2, 3 and 4 were far more manageable in number of children and time to set up. This meant that the children involved had more time to play games, draw, paint, and dance. The kids and their parents were truly amazing. To see the kids play with their new toys, you wouldn’t know that this one lost their mom, that one’s dad died, these over here don’t have a home, and she’s an orphan. There isn’t much more I can say about June 1st,except that I hope those toys did some good, and then let the pictures speak
for themselves.
As for an update on the group that is working on these projects… Sichuan Quake Relief met the other night and decided to shift focus from emergency aid relief to long term projects. The first step is for researchers to head out into the affected areas and collect information on what is needed. Once a project database has been established, projects will be chosen, and information disseminated to other organizations, businesses, and government related offices who want it.
Red Pandas at the Chengdu Panda Base could be termed ‘second-class citizens’ since they are inevitably in the giant shadow of the giant pandas. Asked to MC for the opening bash for More Chengdu magazine, they agreed that we should feature the red pandas and raise money by auctioning a couple of Kati’s photos of the red pandas.
Here is the spiel that Kati prepared for the evening
Southwest China is categorized as one of the world’s rare Hotspots of Biodiversity, which means that the natural areas of Sichuan and Yunnan are particularly rich in the variety of unique animal and plant species. Many of these species – including the giant panda, red panda and golden monkey – are extremely vulnerable, if not endangered. The Chengdu Panda Base is a non-profit organization committed to conservation and research of wildlife in the Southwest China Hotspot, to captive breeding and exhibition of giant pandas and red pandas, and to conservation education. We have the strongest conservation research and education programs of any institution in China. Details of the programs and activities of the Panda Base may be found in the brochures available at this event.
The giant pandas receive a great deal of publicity and resources, and support for their conservation efforts is wonderful. Other, equally-endangered species fall into the shadow of the great black and white bear, however, and one of these “poor cousins” is the red panda. This animal shares habitats with the giant panda, also lives primarily on bamboo, and suffers the same threats for extinction. It is a beautiful, enigmatic creature with physical and personality characteristics that remind one of bears, cats and raccoons. Resources for red panda programs are very limited, however, as most of the available money goes to giant pandas. At the Chengdu Panda Base, we are desperate for a new enclosure to relieve the crowded, stressful conditions under which the red pandas currently live and in which their health and reproduction suffer. We are also developing a badly-needed red panda hospital. Your support of the red panda program at the Chengdu Panda Base is enormously appreciated.
If you are interested in details of particular programs, please contact Dr. Sarah Bexell (education) or Dr. Kati Loeffler (animal health, scientific research and red pandas). Business cards with contact information are available by the information materials.
So it feels like life is finally back to ‘normal’, with work requirements kicking in. The cats have also noticeably increased their yawn frequency, so either I’m talking to them more, or it’s hot and humid nowadays.
Setting up a system so that our customers can check order status online. Very clever and free and legal software. It is clever because it is easy to use for us. This Monday is Dragon Boat Festival (Duan Wu Jie, Jie = Festival, as in Chun Jie, Spring Festival, beloved of Zebedee), in which strict ladies sit in rubber dinghies and are applauded. It’s also connected with a poet Qu Yuan who was banished for opposing an alliance with the Kingdom of Qin during the Zhou Dynasty. When the Qin (pronounced as in ‘double chin’) state invaded, he committed suicide in the MiLuo river, in JiangXi province in the southeast of China. Despite having written large quantities of poetry he was admired by many people. Legend has it that people rushed to the water to throw in ZongZi, a triangular glob of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. They often have a bit of meat in the middle and are very tasty indeed, and make great snack food. People threw the zongzi into the river to prevent the fish from eating Qu Yuan’s body. The festival is marked by eating plenty of zongzi, and by dragon boat races. The day is also known as the double fifth, because it falls on the fifth day of the fifth Chinese lunar month.
This year, instead of 3 weeklong holidays, the government has split the hols into more manageable batches, creating bank holidays. It’s better for our factory and better for travel in general, as railway stations and airports got clogged up. The scenes from the recent winter storms showed the kinds of crowds that are generated when a gazillion people all want to take the same train.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2008sxa7.php is a link to a website that encapsulates so much that is good about the Internet. It’s open, free, combines various technologies cleverly, quickly and the results are clear and useful. Random Stuff may not reach those goals apart from the second one.
At about 2pm the office wobbled a bit for what seemed like 10 seconds. We are on the second floor (third floor for non-Brits) in a buidling with a steel-reinforced concrete frame but close to 1st Ring Road which seems to have not much below it given how much it oscillated on 12th May 08. Everyone stopped for a moment, then looked at other people, and then the smiles of relief spread around the office as it becomes clear that it’s ‘only’ an aftershock. It cannot be much fun at or near the epicentre, where they are still clearing buildings away and clearing away bodies.
For each dead person, the family will receive 5000 RMB (Approx 7 RMB to the USD at the moment, about 13.6 RMB to the GBP), which is possibly between a year’s and 6 months’ pay for most of the people affected. The smell of bleach / death still lingers/clings/dawdles clammily around the affected areas.
Driving past a collapsed primary school (one of many) with framed photos of the killed children is, for all, silencing. Stricter building codes will help in the future, but it’s not certain how many ‘good’ buildings can withstand 3 to 4 minutes of a 7+ earthquake. We spoke to the manager of one of the newest 5-star hotels, who said that it was built to withstand a 9-scale earthquake, but, he added, “it’s hard to know which buildings can survive a big earthquake that lasts that long.”
One teenager reported how one teacher had reacted when the ‘big one’ hit. She initially did the ‘sensible’ thing, and then panic took over. She asked the children to sit down and sit still for a moment, and then, as the building started to gyrate violently, she ran out of the classroom. Few people here are trained for these situations, and almost everyone in our office, once they saw what our building was doing, sprinted out with few thoughts for other people. It is hard to know how anyone can react to something like it.
Otherwise, the Sun is shining and we’re celebrating someone’s birthday tonight!
Another positive piece of news is that the first baby was born recently in one of the field hospitals set up by the government and aid agencies. I met Antonin, a Czech former colonel who is a logistics specialist and was in Chengdu along with a British fire service senior officer to coordinate the delivery of EU aid shipments, and he passed on that information. Both men were very impressed with the openness, rapidity and scale of the response of the authorities here and local people’s willingness to help.
3 weeks after the quake and life is gradually returning to normal in Chengdu, for those who have not been directly affected (bereavement, lost house, lost factory, lost office). www.sichuan-quake-relief.org have been sending aid up into some remoter/more ignored parts of the earthquake disaster zone and I’ve been along twice, once to help deliver food (rice, apples, hua jiao, soya milk powder, milk formula for babies), and the second time to help deliver ‘hygiene packs’. These are a black bin bag containing a large plastic bowl (OK for washing your face, doing dishes etc), sanitary pads (huge smiles of relief for those), toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, washing powder, dynamo torches, mosquito coils, a pack of playing cards and some other small items. Derek and (aaargh, forgotten name) had put together 1200 of these this time, having assembled several hundred of them previously.
SQR/The Bookworm (www.chengdubookworm.com) arrange one-tonne trucks with drivers. Last Sunday we were in a convoy of 2 trucks and a Jeep, and reached villages which had simply collapsed. Almost everyone is living in a tent city/town/village now, with some temporary, Portakabin-looking structures erected in some places for the local central admin. Water and rice deliveries/supplies seem to be getting through. Now people’s minds must be turning to deciding what to do in the future. For those who have fields/farms, rebuilding their homes must seem like a reasonable option. For those who do not have this direct economic connection, it’s time to decide if the pull of ‘home’ is strong enough to prevent migration to a city or nearby town. Other factors play a role in migration, such as the ‘hukou’ – registration in a particular district which gives access to education, services, ID etc.
Many people have said that seeing the devastation/rubble/disaster/collapsed towns has made them reconsider their priorities and that’s been true of friends here.