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"Red Heart Moon" a WEST MEETS EAST China Weblog -- by Kevin Hart
Cross-cultural musings about life straddling the Pacific.
last modified Jun 16, 2004 at 17:43
No numbers have been released (understandably, as everyone is so busy with everything else), but I would say a good 10% of Chengdu's population has already left the city, either temporarily or permanently. My sister-in-law's family has all moved to Chongqing, and there are bound to be hundreds of thousands more. Supplies are tight, many roads are in bad condition, and they have to deal with the very unnerving after shocks (already more than 7,000 to date, according to many sources) that continue to rattle the region. It might takes months to settle down, and then how long to rebuild?
I remember our last time there, I actually felt a slight shiver in the land and thought how soft the ground was. While Chongqing is built on much more solid ground, our neighbours in our high-rise complex all thought the building would come down and that would be it for them. Fortunately, everything held, but no one has slept well since.
I checked a geological map the other day and was happy to find there are no major faults in the Hong Kong area. The biggest and most potentially dangerous is the one that runs underneath Taiwan, nearly splitting the island in two. That has caused so much devastation and hardship before and is bound to again. It makes me consider geological factors when making future plans...
In the west we often say bad things come in threes, so let's hope that is it for major disasters in China this year. First the snowstorms around Chinese New Year, then the Tibet riots, now the Sichuan earthquake felt in 3/4 of the country and beyond. A ton of money has been raised to help out, and I have been impressed by the openness and willingness to do everything possible to limit the suffering. Superstitious people believe it resulted in part because both Chairman Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are both Taurus and this is not a good year for them. How easy it is to make accurate predictions after the fact!
All our families and friends are safe, thank goodness, but the devastation is so widespread and the death toll far higher than it should have been. Why? The simple phrase that you may find in an earlier entry called "Tou Gong Jian Liao" which means, roughly, cut corners and save on costs. The terrible building practices of so many unscrupulous developers are now under the spotlight (as it should be regardless), and now maybe finally, the fat cats will be held responsible for their reproachable work ethic.
A good friend of mine said something bad must happen for something good to occur (in the case of China, the "Cultural" Revolution, June 4, natural disasters, etc. have all led to remarkable improvements in various areas). Let's hope that building codes are more closely scrutinized and enforced, this will be a big step forward.
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