20080514: notes on the big shake

There is so much construction here in Chengdu that most people just thought it was a large lorry going past that was making the windows shake a bit. Then it got a bit looney tunes and I saw a few people doing a Scooby Doo exit (“Yikes!”) and then

someone said “earthquake,” at this point my natural instinct for heroically saving

other people came in, and I sprinted for the door.

It’s all very well saying ‘just take cover in a door frame’ if you have a proper door frame in a well constructed building. Our building survived OK, but you are not to know that when you know it is another one that was put up in 20 minutes (OK, 20 days) by pumping concrete into wooden forms (why bother prefabricating when you can just pump it in?). In effect most buildings here are built of frames of this pumped concrete (concrete beams like the edges of a cube). No doubt this is good if you trust the quality inspection system and attention to detail in a construction sector.I spoke to a couple of Kiwis (plenty of earthquakes there) and they have been trained to shelter

under desks and then door frames. Er… not here. One teacher got all his kids to shelter under the desks (chipboard veneered desks which make IKEA construction look like quadruple reinforced carbon fibre) and then he quickly came to his senses and employed plan B (for ‘Bugger off out of here!’)

We are on the 2nd floor (3rd floor in ‘foreign’) so I think everyone in our offices now has a personal best for leaving the office (even quicker than on Friday evening, or any start of lunch break, which is very impressive).Then we all got out into the middle of

the dual carriageway (cars had stopped – amazing that drivers here looked at anything at all) and felt OK until we realized that standing on a road does not mean standing in a place that cannot give way. They are building a metro/underground system here, so there is plenty of hollow distance down there somewhere.

Once we had checked everyone was out, we sent everyone home and then with our IT bloke (Ben, English guy) we made our way to the centre of Chengdu. Kirsten was on the 26th floor in her office and Ben’s girlfriend works in a highrise block in the main square.

Luckily both had got out and made their separate ways home. Scary moments were had by them. Kirsten could not walk in their office, such were the tremours up there. Very very scary. She’s in a very modern office block with companies like Chevron and Standard Chartered Bank, but you just never know, and it’s not easy at a moment

like that to stand calmly and reassure people with, “Don’t worry everyone. The construction standards used to design and build this mini skyscraper are some of the best in the world. Oh, mind that flying computer. Coffee and biscuits anyone?”

Ben and I made our way on our trusty wheels of steel. He was on his trusty electric scooter (it’s a nice one – at least 4 different attempts to steal it from the company car park in the past few months. It now has to be chained to the main water pipe by the

security guard) and I was on the bicycle. Our office is on First Ring Road

(‘inner circular’ ?)so we just headed round that and then it’s just about a kilometre to K’s office.The streets were full of people and occasionally a surge of them would spill out into the road. In general, and completely unexpectedly, the general

discipline and calmness were astonishingly good. People just made their way, most walking, many driving, many cycling/scootering, and there were few road accidents – amazing, given the number of people (imagine stock footage of horror/disaster movies with everyone pouring out onto the streets – it really was like that, except Godzilla never turned up, and Tommy Lee Jones didn’t divert any lava). Luckily for me a text message had got through telling me that Kirsten was OK and that she was waiting for me outside her office.

The mobile phone network had buckled under the pressure. Scotty was calling from the engine room, “We don’t have the switches, captain.” A few texts were getting through. Some people were OK making international and ‘out of Sichuan province’ calls, but calls in Sichuan were just not getting through. A friend of Kirsten’s is visiting us here. She was due to land in Chengdu after a trip to JiuZhaiGou (beautiful valleys -

seen in … Tiger, Dragon (leaping, crouching, pooing?)) and is now in Kunming, in

Yunnan province, south of here. Free hotel, and Kunming is a nice place. That’s fine, except that her family in the States thought she might be dead. We watched CNN dredge for information, but the fact that someone’s chandeliers were trembling in Beijing

was cold comfort for the parents and brother of Sarah, who is out of the USA for the first time. Hilarious situation! She’s v. independent and is fine, by the way – we managed to speak to her early this morning.

After hanging around outside Kirsten’s office for more than an hour, another text got through saying she was heading to the Shangri La Hotel. That figured, given the quality of their G and Ts. I met a friend on the river bank outside the hotel, who, by-the-by

mentioned that if the river water seeped into the nearby hotel’s foundations, then the whole place was toast (rather crumply, soggy toast) so I gave him a lift on the back of my bicycle along 1st Ring Road. The road sweepers were still working. That is some strict boss. [”Hello boss, there’s been a major earthquake. People here are fleeing for their lives, expecting highrise blocks to collapse on them at any moment, that’s if the dodgily constructed roads don’t just give way, sucking tens of thousands of people into a concrete-block death hole” “If I find a single ice cream wrapper, you’re dead! Get back to your broom” “OK. I apologise for my lack of commitment.”]

I dropped Richard off at the Shamrock the local expat boozer, and headed off home. Still masses of people, still all v. organised, no excessive barging/pushing or panic. I found Kirsten. They wouldn’t let us back into our apartment block – potential gas leaks, so we were forced to go to the boozer. A few beers, a quick email from a friendly owner of a laptop sneaking into a local restaurant’s wireless network, and some shared stories later, and we were feeling better. We went back to the house, fed the (terrified) cats and then went out to meet the Japanese sales agents visiting our factory. They were at the Shangri La, and security was tight – most streets now were

lined with people ready to bed down for the night, since all were scared that the predicted aftershocks would collapse the buildings. Many spent the night in their cars, others in tents, others just on the side of the road, on the pavement, on any patch of space available.

We went back to our place at midnight, didn’t sleep that well – some rather trembly aftershocks, lots of phone calls (including from USA – Sarah (our guest)’s family and K’s family).

20080617: back to normal

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.

20080607 : Chengdu, part 4 (Kirsten)

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.

20080605: 3 weeks after the earthquake

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.