Sichuan Earthquake Update

Archive for May, 2008

Ricefield Arts and Culture Centre, a Glasgow-based art orgnisation has decided to donate all proceed of its coming exhibition, Chinese Water-based Woodblock Prints by Chen Qi, to Sichuan Earthquake Appeal for helping children affected by Sichuan earthquake.

Chen Qi is one of China’s leading contemporary printmakers, and a professor of Fine Art at Beijing University. Chen Qi uses distinctive Chinese icons extensively in his woodblock prints. Each of his works reflects the simple, elegant and tranquil elements of traditional Chinese painting.

Ricefield Arts was founded by Lin Chau and Julia Hung in 2004. While Ricefield Arts gears into nurturing Chinese art and culture within the Chinese community in Scotland, helping its members to embrace their common heritage, it is also dedicated to share this great tradition with all the people of Scotland, enriching the cultural life of this nation.

source: Baidu Post
Translated by Karen.

I am a surgeon. I am standing on the land of Beijing now. I resigned from my job in Livepool UK yesterday and hurried all my way back to Beijing. Sichuan is my hometown. My motherland is being devastrated by this disaster. I couldn’t bear to watching all these without doing something. I have to come back and fight in the front line.

It was on 12th of May when the 7.8 grade earthquake attacked my hometown. I couldn’t imagine how it looks like now, but I have to face the cruel fact that my dearest parents, who gave me life and raised me up, have died in this devastation. My uncle told me this terrible news that I would rather never know and hope it would never come true! My son kept asking me about his grandparents, ‘Where are grandpa and grandma? Are they all right?’ I don’t know how to answer.

I cried for a whole day, finished two dozen packs of cigerattes, then I decided to go back to my motherland by all means, either resigning or taking holidays - I just had to go back. I have lost my parents, and I have to save more parents. I still have my son. I hope to see more parents and children reunited with my contribution.

I arrived Beijing eventually. I phoned many hostipals, but all the rescure teams have already set out. All right, I just have to go by myself then. I have booked my flight ticket of 8am tomorrow for Chengdu. I am going to Wenchuan from Dujiangyan. I must go to the most severely-damaged places where more supports are needed.

I do not cry anymore. I have found a way to return gratitude to my parents. They worked hard to give me the chance to be a doctor. I can’t save my parents, but I can save someone else’s parents.

Dear dad and mum, your son is kneeing down to pay you last respect. From now on he will use all he has learned to help others. I wish what I do will make you proud and smile from the heaven.

Heaven Bless China.

This is a story about a mother’s last feeding, a feeding that won more time her baby.

- source: sina.com

The speed for the connection of the video might be slow. The mandarin voiceover can be briefly translated as follows.

This story is heard from a docter in the frontline. On 13th May, a rescue team found the body of a young mother in the rubble near Dujiangyan, protecting her 3 or 4 months old baby using her body. The mother was still breast-feeding the baby when she died. The baby was still suckling, but the mother had already passed away. The mother won the battle against the time for her baby, feeding and keeping her child alive with her love and courage.

Mei Wong’s letter.

Hi All

Firstly, apologies to those that have received this more than once.

As you may know the BC Project has been working with various Chinese community groups over the past week to raise funds for the China earthquake appeal. Tonight, to coincide with the third day of mourning in China, the BC Project is co-organising a candlelight vigil for the earthquake victims.

The vigil will be held tonight (Wednesday 21st May) at the London Chinatown Pagoda on Newport Place from 8pm - 11pm. If you’re free please do pop by and light a candle - we will observe 1 minute silence at 8.30, 9.30 and 10.30pm.

If you can please tell your family, friends and colleagues about this too and thanks for your help and support.
Best wishes

Mei Wong
BC Project
0750 800 5645

Translated from Chinese by Candice Zhou

The 12 years old student Li Yue was from Beichuan. She was buried in the ruins. Her left leg was stuck between huge concrete sheets. The rescuers didn’t have the equipment to remove the heavy concrete. Li Yue begged the man accompanied her, ”I’d rather kill myself if I lost my leg.”

The dilemma facing the rescue team was there were four other students buried underneath Li Yue who were still alive. If they couldn’t take Li Yue out quickly, the four students’ can’t be rescued and their lives were in danger. There were several aftershocks everyday, and might cause more casualties. At last, Li Yue’s mom agreed to doctor’s advice. Her daughter’s left leg was to be amputated on site.

After 69 hours under the ruins, Li Yue was rescued. When she awaked, she found she had already lost her left leg. However, she didn’t cry.

I have seen many stories about the earthquake, and this is the first one about the child who didn’t cry. Wish small Li Yue be strong to go on her way. And hope more people will come to help her and support her.

original link:http://glockwq.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

A tea party and charity auction held in Edinburgh Confucius Institute raised 700 pounds for the Help the Earthquake Children campaign.

The event, organised by Dr Yuhua Hu of Edinburgh University, was to raise fund for the charity Mother Bridge of Love (MBL), who will use the donation to help children affected by the Sichuan earthquake. Some local and visiting artists donated their work for the auction. Xiang Silou, a woodblock artist, donated two of his woodblock prints through Edinburgh Confucius Institute. A professor from Sichuan Normal University Institute of Arts, Xiang Silou is currently the artist in residence at the Burrell Collection, Glasgow and had exhibition recently in Ricefield. He went back to Sichuan before the earthquake and would like to help the people in the earthquake by donating his art work. Many Chinese of all generations had donated artifacts, jewels, fashion accessories and green teas for the auction. Wang Ying, a young artist, brought her own painting, Boy with a Bamboo Flute, to the event. The boy in the painting is a young Sichuan boy Miss Wang met during her trip to Sichuan last year.

Participants of the tea party and auction were mainly Chinese students, professionals and their local friends. Consul Li Li Bei from Chinese Consulate General told the audiences she was touched by the support and solidarity shown by the British public. Wendy Wu, CEO of MBL, expressed her gratitude towards Dr Yuhua Hu, the auction host Dr Zhongdong Niu, a Napier University lecturer, other helpers who were all volunteers, and the participating crowd. She also discussed some potential projects in Sichuan earthquake area the donation could support.

Several local Chinese artists came to give performance during the party. Dr Zhongdong Niu injected some auction spirit into it by asking the audiences to bid for the performance, bringing some joy into the otherwise solemn occasion. The most touching performance, however, was Mr Zhang Suning’s reading of two of his poems inspired by the true stories in the rescue process.

The event raised about 700 pounds for the Help the Earthquake Children project. Dr Yuhua Hu, a member of CYPE (Chinese Young Professionals in Edinburgh) said she’s glad to be able to do something to help the earthquake children. “I’ve seen tremendous support and kindness from the friends and public which the earthquake children will appreciate. We must do more to help them,” said Wendy Wu. MBL is cooperating with other organisation to run more fundraising events around the UK.

(more…)

News source

Two buildings collapsed in the earthquake in Juyuan secondary school China,Photographied by Junhu Li, repoter of Finance and Economy.

On the day returning to school, Shihao Guo read a card with his writing with tears,’ Brother Wei Zhu, Are you all right in Heaven?

On 19th of May, Some of secoundary one students in Juyuan Secondary school, city of Dujiangyan, returned to class.

The classes were moved to Juyuan Primary school because in Juyuan Scoundary, 1 or 2 km away, 2 buildings collapsed in the earthquake and several hundred students and 6 teachers were tragically killed.

The head teacher of Juyuan Secondary school said,’ one week ago, we were working and studying together, but now we are seperated between 2 worlds.’

(more…)

The audiences are warned that the first half of this video contains some highly distressful pictures (they may have seen too many). However, in the second half, the author of this video, who was born and raised in Yingxiu and Dujiangyan, expressed his sorrow and love to his hometown, which is heart-warming.
(source: http://www.youtube.com/v/2LjHiMXAxaU)

- Translated from Chinese by Candice Zhou

When the rescue team found her, she was already dead, crushed by the collapsing building. Through the gap of a pile of rubble, the resucers saw her in a strang kneeing position, upper body bending forward, two arms stretching to support the body, as if in an ancient ceremony. The rescuers shouted toward the debris, tapped on the bricks. No response. They moved on.

The team leader suddenly realised something. He rushed back. “Come! Come!”, shouted he. He moved closer to her, stretched to reach underneath her upper body. After trying several times, he shouted, “There is someone! There is a child! Alive!”

After while they managed to remove the rubble on top of her. Underneatch her chest, protected by her arms and legs, was this baby, wrapped in a red quilt with yellow flower spots, only 3 or 4 months old, sleeping, uninjuried.

A doctor came to examine the baby. Unfolding the quilt, a mobile phone dropped out. On the screen, there was a text message, “My dear baby, if you survive, remember I love you.”

The doctor, who had seen too many terrible things in the last few days, bursted into tears. The phone was carefully passed around the rescuers, when the tears flow.

By Fu Jing
Updated: 2008-05-19 07:29

Working close to the epicenter of last Monday’s Wenchuan earthquake for nearly a week, I, a Sichuan native, cannot help mulling over how nature has challenged us to overcome the toughest circumstances.
What was the great disaster really like? The locals have their own ways to describe the moment when the quake struck.
Peng Shuihe, 38-year-old miner, started to stride through the 1,000-meter-long tunnel in the high-altitude mountains of Shifang shortly after the devastating earthquake. Describing his ordeal, he said: “The landslides and falling stones lasted for a day and night in the valleys and the noises they made were like bursting fireworks during Spring Festival.”
Luckily, the mud did not close the entrance of the tunnel. Peng survived and stayed with mounting fears at the foot of the mountains for two days before the rescuers reached him and his fellow-workers.
Wei Yin, aged 14, said her classroom in a three-storied building at Hongbei town of Shifang “fell in a grey smoke” within seconds, burying the majority of her schoolmates.
On the plains, experienced driver Yu Dengyun put the quake like this: “The ground became like chopping water in the sea and I was scared that the water might swallow my car.”
When the earthquake took place at 2:28 pm last Monday, I was in a taxi in Beijing and did not feel it. On the second day I was sent to my home province to cover the disaster. Driving and walking along the death zones and bumpy roads, I found that the bridges had broken down, railways twisted and towns and villages had turned to rubble.
The scenes, which filled me with tears of sorrow, engraved the details in my mind.
Graduating from a young reporter to a career journalist, I have from time to time been covering disasters such as floods, environmental pollution in coalmines and mine blasts. In the winter of 2005, I rushed to cover a coalmine blast, which claimed the lives of up to 200 miners in the tunnels in Heilongjiang province, Northeast China. Watching rescuers digging out the dead and their families reduced to desperation and misery, I was praying: there should be no more such stories, though I knew that disaster scenes are battlefields for journalists.
But I have long been wrong. Both in China and abroad, disasters come one after another. And here in my home Sichuan, the loss is immense. The death toll in a single building, workshop, community or village can surpass the number of the dead and injured I witnessed in the coal mine blast in Northeast China.
Miracles of life come one after another. I felt a little relieved on Saturday as I met two survivors along the valleys in mountainous regions of Shifang who had been buried in the ruins for five days.
But Saturday was also a sad day for me. Three of our China Daily reporters braved the danger of landsides to drive across a 100-meter-long bridge to the isolated Jinhua town of Mianzhu. We found that rescuers with life detectors reached the one-kilometer-long town five days after the deadly earthquake.
The rescuers told me in the late afternoon that there were no signs of life in the five sites mentioned by locals, although in the morning, a man cried out in a weak voice from the black debris, saying “I can hold on”.
The town is in the high mountains and linked by twisted railway and road bridges, which might put rescuers in danger if they happened to be caught by strong aftershocks. And several local officials in the town died in the earthquake and so the organization of disaster relief was in disorder.
The 51-year-old He Zhangju of the town guided me to a big hole in the field just 50 meters away from his ruined home. The hole was caused by a stone falling from the 2,000 meter-high mountains. The stone was nowhere to be seen when I arrived there.
“Before the quake and its aftermaths such as landslides, we are powerless,” she said. But she further complained: “But we can have the rescue efforts started earlier.”
I fully understood her.
But the quake was extremely strong and devastating and covered massive lands in Sichuan and even neighboring provinces. It takes time to mobilize resources. For those who have not been at the scenes, especially in the high maintain ranges, it is not easy to understand how tough the rescue efforts are.
Also, there were continuous aftershocks during the post-quake days.
At about two in the early morning of Sunday, when I was just about to go to bed at the home of my parents-in-law in Deyang, the strongest ever aftershock forced me to rush out in the open. Half an hour later, I calmed down and picked up courage to return to the building.
With the wind blowing through the windows, I could not fall asleep. Was the sound the wind made, I feared, from an aftershock?
(China Daily 05/19/2008 page9)