Results tagged “wenchuan”

Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera continues on his journey in Sichuan province, talking and spending time with quake victims who are still struggling with putting back the broken pieces of their lives. For some, getting back to work has proven easy enough, but the spiritual and emotional anguish they continue to experience on a daily basis remains deep six months on.

Right: A woman over 60 years old, Wang Youqiong, was saved from the rubble 196 hours after the quake. She is now severely dehydrated and under intensive care at the Chengdu Huaxi Hospital. It is currently still unclear what damage has been done to her vital organs.

Scuffles between aid volunteers and survivors of earthquake broke out in Mianyang, as victims struggled to find water and food supplies. [May 19]

Shanghaiist has been nonstop busy for the past several days fielding emails and returning calls from companies interested in donating to the raffle at ‘The Great Shanghaiist Benefit for Earthquake Victims at Sasha's’. It’s a great reason to feel overworked.

Yet more notes from the field forwarded to us by our friends from Chengdoo:

Via a new blog called Speak4China which comes with the hearty recommendation of the China Law Blog: On the day the Wenchuan earthquake struck, these students from a Sichuan high school were evacuated from their building and to while away their time, they took this video of themselves pretending to do an earthquake interview on live television. One girl said she didn't care about her parents and only for the pop duo Twins, another said she hoped there was an earthquake everyday and a third said she hoped the school building would collapse soon so they didn't have to go to school ever again. This soon unleashed yet another powerful "human flesh search engine" (not unsimilar to the one experienced by Duke university student Grace Wang) in which enraged netizens tracked down the students and harrassed them in every way possible (no details on how they were harrassed though).

Scenes captured across Chengdu during the three minutes of silence, when all of China ground to a halt yesterday. For many Chengdu-ites, this earthquake has hit very, very close to home:

China-based Twitterers too observed a 3 minute silence on the 3 minute silence that took place from 14:28 to 14:31 just now to mark the first of three days of national mourning, and this is what they said immediately afterwards.

Several tales of motherly love have emerged and are being repeated throughout several Chinese stations and media:

• One mother was found buried dead while still suckling her three month old.
• One picture of a female police officer Jiang Xiaojuan has been making its rounds on the internet. A new mother herself, Jiang has been breastfeeding eight babies orphaned by the quake.
• A third baby was found by rescue workers alive in the arms of his mother who unfortunately didn't make it. Rescue workers also found a mobile phone with the text message, "Honey, if you make it through this, please remember that I love you." The veracity of this particular story has already been questioned by netizens. ESWN in a post "How about less faked touching news?":

  Some netizens pointed out that this story was the one reported in The First and Beijing Evening News. Both of those newspapers sourced their stories to Tianfu Morning News and they were using mostly the same words. Both newspapers said that the child was about 10 month old. The newspapers said that the child was found underneath the body of the mother, but there was no mention of any mobile phone with a SMS on the screen. The SMS was the most moving part of the story, but the newspapers did not mention it. So the Tianya poster was either making things up, or he was an eyewitness, or he learned it from hearsay, or these are two completely stories. It is most likely that this story was made up, because there was no name, time or place.

  Continue reading "Heroic tales of motherly love emerge"

Forwarded to us from our new friends at Chengdu's English-language magazine Chengdoo (Thanks Joe and Jane!). We are posting these up because the needs are real and time-sensitive. Many have died, but the living need help too. Now.

ESWN draws our attention the heart-rending story of Chen Jian. Be very sure you watch all the way to the fourth video, or don't watch at all if you don't intend to cry today:

The government has announced the start of a massive probe to find out why close to 7,000 schools classrooms have been destroyed and promised that anyone found responsible for shoddy construction will be severely punished. A great many of the casualties we've seen so far are students and teachers who were still in class when the quake struck.

Al-Jazeera: The scenes of destruction and devastation, and the smell of death. Melissa Chan wins our thumbs-up once again with this report:

If, like us, you've never been in an earthquake before, then this amateur video we found on NoCommentTV that was taken during the recent earthquake (exact location unknown) may give you some idea.

UPDATE, 18:09 The first Japanese relief workers are expected to leave tonight. A group of 60 earthquake specialists together with sniffer dogs will head to Sichuan over the next few days. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has appealed for earth-moving equipment to aid rescue efforts in the region. Many relief workers are currently sifting through the rubble with their hands according to ABC News. The latest official death toll stands at 19,500 but is expected to rise sharply over the coming days.

Though reports are varied, it now appears that the current death from the Wenchuan earthquakes is somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000 (latter figure from the Time China Blog, although most of the media is still reporting the official count at a more conservative 15,000. It's still to0 early to say just how high that figure will climb once everything is said and done, but an earlier Time's estimate put that number at around 100,000 (their man Austin Ramzy is there right now). While we hope that this isn't the case, we can see why they would say that, because other sources put the amount of buried or missing at between 27,000 and a staggering 60,000, and time is running out to get these people out.

By Julien Bertrand and Derek Sandhaus

Treehugger: China earthquake threatens nearby dams, environment

Film star Jackie Chan has donated RMB10million to help those in need following the earthquake in Sichuan province. Other celebrities have also dipped into their wallets. From CriEnglish:

"Jackie Chan also sent his consolation to the quake victims and encouraged them to hold on as "people all over the country are with you," the star said.

Continue reading "Celebrity Power: Jackie Chan and Li Yuchun"

Some of you are starting to get in touch with us to send us your list of missing loved ones or friends. We were going to publish this list later, but decided we couldn't wait when we heard this bit of good news: John Bergen of Sichuan Tech and Business College in Dujiangyan has been found, and we've since contacted his friend Peter to let him know.

Right after the earthquake struck, Olympic officials maintained that the torch relay would go on as planned as "the epicenter is not along the route of the torch relay". In fact, one day after the earthquake, China Daily was still offering this really happy and harmonious image of the torch relay. That, unfortunately, did not go down well with people, and after a huge outcry on the Internet which saw Olympic organisers roundly lambasted for being "inhuman", BOCOG , to their credit, has taken a complete about-turn. Apart from this one minute's silence that you see in the video marking the start of the relay, "elaborate ceremonies surrounding the event would be scaled back, procedures simplified and the number of staff reduced".

BBC reports that the group of British tourists on their way to Wolong when the quake struck has turned up unharmed. So far, the official word from Xinhua is that there have been zero foreigner deaths (Note: report is from Tuesday morning), but a more recent report from AFP cites Xinhua as saying two Chinese-Americans and one Thai tourist in Sichuan have yet to be located.

Melissa Chan of Al-Jazeera is one of several foreign correspondents currently in Sichuan Province and files this story from Juyuan Middle School at Dujiangyan (都江堰) where Premier Wen Jiabao was earlier.