Motorcycle Rescue Mission

Two days ago I returned to the mountain where I had been trapped after the earthquake to retrieve my motorcycle. I went with Carl and his friend Chris, riding in the sidecar of a vintage WW2 style bike. The mission was a success and we came down with 5 bikes, three more than we had come up the mountain with. Carl took great photos and wrote a more detailed writeup which is available on his forum but he also uploaded a video to youtube. Check it out:

One Week Later: Grief, Patriotism

After the three minute memorial had completed we found ourselves several city blocks from the epicenter of Chengdu heading toward Tianfu Square. Upon arrival we see that the square, overlooked by a watchful Mao Ze Dong statue, is filled with a crowd of thousands. Everyone seems to be milling around, but as we approach the center of the square I can hear a loud rumbling sound. As I turn on the camera and move closer the sound reveals itself as a crowd of 5,000 pumping fists in the air and cheering "Go China!" (加油中国!).

I had never seen patriotism this strongly in my face before, neither in the West nor the East. China has a strong tendency to rally behind social and political strife as the Tibetan protests from earlier this year have demonstrated, but this was on a scale I hadn't witnessed before. The emotion in the crowd was overwhelming and ranged from enthusiastic shrieks of national pride from young men to teary eyed children rhythmically hoisting flowers toward the sky, but everyone was united in a public declaration of grief and patriotism. As I've said before, no matter which direction China chooses to go, they go together as one. It's a dramatic difference that China has with it's rival America - a partisan country of fractured social and political composition.

Watch the video of the crowd:

One Week Later: Solidarity

A week after the earthquake on the 12th, China recognized the beginning of a 3-day period of mourning beginning with three minutes of silence at 2:28pm. I had heard conflicting rumors about what would actually happen - one source said there would be silence, another said that everyone across the country would simultaneously be honking car, boat, and train horns while sounding ambulance and police sirens. My plan was to go to the center of Chengdu, Tianfu Square, to witness whatever would happen. Leaving my house at 1:45 we nearly made it, but not quite.

As soon as we hail a taxi headed for the city center, it's clear that this won't be a short trip. The roads are gridlocked but for no apparent reason - up until now I haven't seen the streets anything but empty; with schools and businesses closed, much of the city had already fled for safer ground. We're stuck in a taxi on a hot day surrounded by hundreds of stationary cars.

As we sit on the main North-South artery of Chengdu, the clock approaches 2:28 and people start honking. One person honks and another honks in response, and two more in response to the second. After 5 seconds of this it's clear that it has begun - everyone is parked in the street, honking simultaneously and the sound and sight of this is surreal and stunning. We exit the car and take a look around. Watch the video I took:

The feeling for those three minutes was very tense. Part of me felt that by filming it I was distracted and slightly detached from the holy moment, as it were. No one spoke and most people didn't move. Buses were filled with passengers who stood up for free minutes on the bus, quietly looking in front of them. Taxi drivers stood outside their cars, reaching an arm in through the window to sound the horn. A few people quietly rode bicycles through the motionless crowds on the street, others stopped and stood.

During those three minutes part of me was on Ren Min Nan Lu - another was envisioning the incomprehensible terror of thousands of buildings falling without warning, innocent children being effortlessly crushed and pinned under debris, and tourists on the same mountain as I being entombed by landslides and swallowed by merging mountains. I felt incredible grief.

The Road to Recovery

Recovery efforts have been underway for 6 days now.

Since the original 7.9 magnitude earthquake there have been over 5,000 small tremors and about 100 significant aftershocks. The city of Chengdu, 100km to the South East of the epicenter, struggles to return to normal while each successive aftershock tests what appears to be its last nerve. In spite of this, the uniformly generous and selfless nature of the population of China is as overwhelming as the sheer destructive power of this disaster.

It's been almost 36 hours since I've felt a significant aftershock and just before the last one came, moments ago, my girlfriend had said how quiet it's been here. I barely had time to voice my agreement when the room started shaking and glasses on the table started chattering. It lasted about 20 seconds and was the strongest aftershock I've felt since 1am yesterday morning, which registered a 6.0 on the richter scale. Here in Chengdu these aftershocks are merely discomforting, but having been in areas closer to the epicenter I know that the power of these aftershocks is exponentially more fierce and dangerous in areas which are in the greatest need of help.

Yesterday I returned to Qing Cheng Mountain, which I was trapped on for 24 hours during the earthquake. Some of the roads were repaired and it was a much easier trip up the mountain this time than it was coming down the day after the earthquake. The weather was clear, the rain had subsided, and the aftershocks were much less frequent. As it were, I didn't feel any aftershocks at all until we'd arrived back to the original destination where everything had first happened. It was unnerving to be in the same place and again experience the frightening familiarity of the ground trembling beneath me. We didn't stick around for long - I took a few hundred photos and we began our descent. Along the way I took nearly 500 photos which are uploading as I write this. A picture is worth a thousand words and I believe these photos will do that phrase justice.

Here's a preview video which was filmed steps away from where I was when the earthquake occurred:

2:28pm this afternoon marks one week since this disaster and alarms will be sounded all across the country for three minutes, followed by three days of mourning. I'll go to Tianfu Square (the center of Chengdu, which sits in front of a towering statue of Mao) and take some photos and video at that time.