Disaster Intermission: Manicure

While I did volunteer and I did mourn and just couldn't have done otherwise than to take the last two weeks' events very seriously, I did engage in at least* one irreverent activity, which was to go get my nails painted with Megan (American) and Shirley and June (Chinese), three coworkers of mine. I've never had a manicure anywhere else, so I can't compare and contrast for you, but it was fun. Megan and June got plain old clear polish, Shirley went for bright red and I asked for rainbow. I had some discussion with the ladies working there about what exactly I meant, and in the end there was still confusion, because they gave me stripes and I had wanted solid colours. Oh well. They gave me the extra stripes underneath each main one as an afterthought, really. Next time I'll be more clear. For the moment, I'm fashion** enough for me.

*Uh, at very least

**fash·ion /ˈfæʃən/
-adjective [origin: Chinese English (Chinglish)]
1. Fashionable, stylish, attractive, in referring to clothes, accessories or the people wearing them.: Your new shirt, I think very fashion!

Aftershocks fizzle

There was a panic of sorts on Monday night because the provincial Seismological Bureau (rightly) issued a warning about expected strong aftershocks in the quake zone. That night I got call after call and text message after text message from worried Chinese friends (and one French friend) saying that I should sleep outside. I didn't. I was a little worried about it, though, since these were trustworthy friends telling me that it wasn't a rumor and they had heard it themselves on the news, repeatedly.
Anyway, they weren't lying, but they were wrong. The next day the Seismological Bureau had to issue a clarification to the people of Chengdu saying, once and for all "Chengdu is not in 'the quake zone'. Stay in your homes."

Anyway, I'm fine. I did have a pretty cool dream that night though, about the building swaying back and forth like one of those ducks or horses in playgrounds that are each on a really huge stiff spring, that then kids get on and rock back and forth. A lot of people are still sleeping outside. Far from a majority, I should say, but a lot. Tents are still up on almost every available patch of grass or empty lot in the city. There's really no more danger, so my theory is that since the weather's so beautiful, they just decided that since it was so fun sleeping outside, and they took so long setting up a little tent complex with tarps and mattresses and all, why not a few nights more?

From the Chengdu International Women's Club:
In an interview this morning on Sichuan television, an official of the
prediction office of the Sichuan Seismological Bureau said that the
warning last night was for the central earthquake zone and that
Chengdu does not lie in the aftershock danger zone. Any aftershock
that reaches Chengdu will be much weaker than the original quake.
Chengdu people, long as they are not living in a weak structure, have
nothing to worry about, said the seismologist. In fact people running
out in the streets might be hit by something that fell off a building,
he said. He showed a map of the aftershocks, adding that 4000
aftershocks have been detected since the May 12 quake. The map shown
on TV of the May 12 and aftershocks lie in a rectangular box running
from the southwest to the northeast with a centerline just west of the
western margin of the Chengdu plain. A similar map is on the USGS
website earthquake.usgs.gov at http://tinyurl.com/5loy9c

Volunteering at the airport

Donate to earthquake relief here: http://donate.ifrc.org/




On Saturday I went with Megan, Shirley (a Chinese coworker) and 闫小红, an ex-military friend of Shirley's, to volunteer in disaster relief. This isn't something special, by the way. Everyone in the city seems to want to volunteer. Of course, what the humanitarian agencies really want are volunteers with medical training, engineering expertise, or search and rescue experience. The high schools haven't resumed classes either, so a lot of older kids are volunteering to do whatever civilian work needs to be done. Anyway, 闫小红 being a former soldier, he took us to the airport, where Shirley knew there was help needed, and ask a police officer to drive us to the site, which he did cheerfully. We spent the rest of the day at a cargo bay, where we and a couple of hundred other volunteers were needed unloading incoming relief supplies shipments and packing them onto trucks bound for Wenchuan, Beichuan, Deyang, Dujiangyan, or other hard-hit towns.
It seemed as organized as you might expect, although we still ended up spending a lot of time waiting around between shipments. It was amazing to see the planes coming in close to us and know that many of them were loaded with supplies sent from all over China. Most of it was medicine, medical supplies and water, although one train of pallets was full of hurricane lanterns. Everyone was clearly happy to be helping, happy to be doing something small but concrete, making human conveyor belts just to get everything sent on its way as soon as possible. Together with the labels on the boxes showing they'd been sent with love from Tianjin or Shenzhen or Beijing (faraway cities) it all gave a really strong sense of solidarity and selflessness.

Saturday. Donate here: http://donate.ifrc.org/

Friday I went for a walk around town to go get some work done at an ice cream shop. Down on Hong Xing (Red Star) 红星 road in the Chunxilu 春熙路 shopping district there were volunteers collecting for the Red Cross 红十字会 and loading donated supplies onto trucks destined for the disaster zone. Everyone here, in the province, in the country, seems to have been pulling together really well. That includes the government, by the way. No haters. They've been really on the ball and are clearly making concerted efforts, maybe as much as could be expected of any government, to get help to those who need it and information out to the rest of us.
There's been a wonderful sense of community in the city since the earthquake. It started with everyone just sending text messages to everyone else (calls weren't going through) asking if they were ok, their familes, if they had a place to sleep, etc. and it's continued since then. The blood banks filled in two or three days, because people from here to Beijing were lining up to donate. There have been lots of other little closenesses too, like seeing friends again for the first time, volunteering together, being glad we're alive together. It's nice. The whole city feels very homey (and safe).

By the way, injured and homeless survivors are being brought here to Chengdu and Mianyang for treatment and shelter. If you can, please donate something to the Red Cross http://donate.ifrc.org/

Friday Aftershock

It's Friday afternoon in Chengdu now, the earthquake was Monday afternoon. So almost exactly 4 days later, we just got hit with another aftershock. It lasted maybe 15 seconds and it was small. Quite small but clear, and it probably felt stronger up here on the 17th floor. I really can't imagine this fairly new 19-storey apartment high-rise tumbling down now because it swayed a couple of inches, but it is a little stressful to still be feeling aftershocks days later.
Now be aware that I don't know anything about plate tectonics, but it's still worrisome to think that the aftershocks we feel here must be quite a bit stronger 62 miles away in Wenchuan 汶川, at the epicentre. I had thought that everybody was sleeping back inside by now, since the masses of people crowding out the streets and sidewalks on Monday night have long since dispersed. In talking with friends the past two days, however, it seems there's still a significant number of people here in the city (including a few of my friends) sleeping on sports fields and in the amusement park for fear of strong aftershocks.

Rumours and lies (earthquake)

Ok everybody, don't listen to a thing I say! I'm just spreading rumours, that's all. There is NO water shortage expected. Everyone did go and stock up like I said, and the stores were empty of water bottles and such, that's all true. The original water-shortage scare, however, was based on faulty information.
The real story, from the same Chinese friend who gave me the original story, is (appaaaaarently) this:
There was no chemical plant explosion that contaminated the water supply. There was a fire in a plastics factory, and people were worried that it might cause contamination, but that was ruled out as a possibility. Not ruled out quickly enough to stop the rumor mill, though, it seems.

Anyway, my apartment now has 12 bottles of grapefruit juice, 13 bottles of sweet jasmine tea, 6 packets of wet wipes (for water-free hygiene) and every available watertight container, including the blender, filled with tap water for the long and hard and , uh, arduous... uh... yeah, there's no water shortage. Everything's still fine. Goodnight.

(P.S.: Not everyone's ok. Still send money to the Red Cross.)

Wednesday Earthquake Update

The most recent news from my apartment here in Chengdu is the water should be going off sometime today for an indefinite period of time. I heard beforehand from two of my Chinese friends (who get a lot more news through the text message chain than me) that we should go stock up on water because it had been announced on television that a chemical plant exploded today (hearsay) and that that might cause water shortages in the next few days. Then it was announced outside my building. I have to admit, I didn't understand most of the message, though. It was garbled through a megaphone, my Chinese is still poor, and I was 17 floors up, but they said something about water. So there.
I went and dutifully stocked up, but the stores were already sold out of drinking water, so people were just buying drink boxes, Pepsi, milk, whatever they liked and was available. I went for bottles of sweet jasmine tea and grapefruit juice.
It's a beautiful sunny day. The water is still on, for now. I feel stocked up and calm - happy, really. Rescue efforts are continuing in the nearby counties. If you want to help (not me, obviously, the people in Beichuan 北川 and Wenchuan 汶川 counties) you should donate to the Red Cross, as they're the NGO leading the aid charge for the moment.

Love,
Matthew

Earthquake update 2

Ok, a further update on the aftermath of the earthquake this afternoon. At 2:28 it was big and very shaky up on the 8th floor in my office. The news says it was a 7.8. Some people ran for the stairs, many of us stood around shaking in the lobby area until the floor stopped moving (mostly), then made our way down the stairs. A lot of plaster had fallen, and there were some crack in the walls, mostly on the inside, though a few were visible on the exterior. The streets, unsurprisingly, were filled with people. We then saw that a man and a woman were stuck in the glass elevator up on the 4th floor. The man was waving at us and the woman was kneeling down and crying. Fortunately some employee managed to get the power to the elevator back on and they came down and out safely. Everybody I've been able to check in with is fine. Some people are spending the night camped out on the street, but boredom and fatigue got the better of me pretty quickly and so I went home and walked up the 17 flights of stairs to my apartment. The elevator, unsurprisingly, is still shut down. Water and electricity are on in my building, I'm happy to say, after being off for only a few hours. So I feel very blessed. Reading the news, you'll see that it's difficult to feel like some people have been blessed by this. I was happy to see a few minutes ago, though, that the hospital next to my apartment has the lights back on and patients and doctors are visible through the windows. At around 9pm the windows were still black and that didn't seem to bode well.
I'm going to bed now. I expect that things will be calm tomorrow and I'll have no need to update you for a while. Love to all of you.
Matthew

Earthquake

I'm ok! There was a big earthquake in Chengdu, but I'm fine, although that doesn't go for everyone in the city. Most people in the city are still out on the streets, but the power is back on, and I've made my way home and ventured inside to send some updates. I plan on sleeping inside tonight, too. I figure if the building hasn't fallen yet...
Seriously, though. No buildings have fallen.

Anyway, I'm fine, so for those of you to whom it might have occurred to worry: don't.
Lots of love,
Matthew