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Comic strips about the earthquake
Not ha-ha funny comics, but graphic novel-type earnest renderings of some of the earthquake scenes now becoming famous in China. They are by the Chinese artist/illustrator Coco Wang and are here, with captions in English. Check the index on the right side of the page -- "Strip 2: The Boy Who Lived," etc -- to see each of the several-panel installments.
The current installment tells of the rescue of pandas from the Wolong center -- including the fact that the staff was instructed to rescue the foreign visitors first, then the pandas. The images are copyrighted, so here is just one atypically jokey frame from the panda sequence:
Most of the other stories are in far more heroic/tragic mode. The strips are interesting in themselves and are a little window on the imagery and tone with which the earthquake is entering public imagination here. (Thanks to Brian Wagner.)
An account of Mao Mao the Panda's funeral in Wolong
I mentioned earlier that the remains of Mao Mao, a 9-year-old mother panda, had been found in the rubble of the Wolong Panda Reserve a month after the devastating Sichuan earthquake. The current home page of Pandas International features an account by PI's Suzanne Braden about the search for Mao Mao, who had been missing since the earthquake, and what happened thereafter.
It has photos of the search for Mao Mao, an explanation of the "quake lake" phenomenon (which is what did Mao Mao in), and an update on the panda reserve. Strangely moving, including the part about how Mao Mao must have been trapped by rising quake-lake water when the wall finally came down on her. It takes nothing away from respect for the enormous human cost of this event to recognize the other costs too.
Mao Mao the panda laid to rest
Mao Mao, a nine-year old panda who had given birth to five cubs, had not been seen at the Wolong Panda Reserve since the Sichuan earthquake on May 12. On Monday of this week, her body was found under the ruins of her stone enclosure.
The current home page of the (Washington DC) National Zoo's panda page reports her death and says, "Mao Mao was a valuable member of the panda community and will be missed." An AP story on Mao Mao points out the larger peril the earthquake has posed for the Wolong panda breeding program, since many of the females were in the "falling in love" season and were newly impregnated. Also, much of the panda sperm stored in freezers at the reserve, to maximize genetic diversity, may have been lost.
Her keeper, He Changgui, mourns at her grave. According to the AP, "he had cared for the panda since she was 3, speaking to her in the local Sichuan dialect as he worked.
"It's like you could say something and she would understand," he said. "If you were happy, she was happy too."
I do love the idea that Mao Mao spoke not just Chinese but the Sichuan dialect. After all, it was her native region.
(Thanks to Margot Griffith.)
Pandas on TV
Word from Pandas International is that an NBC-TV crew has recently been to the Wolong Panda Reserve, heavily damaged in the recent Sichuan earthquake. Reports are scheduled to run on both the Today show and the Nightly News with Brian Williams tomorrow, Friday, June 13.
"Are scheduled to" is not the same as "will." But for the heck of it, why not tune in? I would if I could.
More on the pandas of Wolong
The main site of Pandas International has pictures and updates on damage to the Wolong panda reserve, plus rescue efforts underway:
And of course NPR's All Things Considered, which was already in Chengdu preparing for a special week of China coverage when the earthquake occurred (and has done outstanding work since then), had this good report about the pandas on its latest show.
Update: Here is another of the post-quake photos of Wolong, via Pandas International:
And here is the same enclosure late last summer:
Earthquake update #4: Middle school pictures (updated in big way)
I am sure there is a limitless supply of pictures like this*, but I found this set particularly affecting because it resembled what I'd seen at other schools. This link, via a Chinese correspondent, is to a Chinese-language site that ran pictures of a Sunday sports day/fun fest at Beichuan Middle School the day before the earthquake. Beichuan was of course near the heart of the devastation, and presumably most of the people shown in these photos are lost. (See important update below.)
Here is a sample, apparently of a middle-school teacher competing with kids in a basketball-carrying stunt race:
And some of the kids taking a turn:
There are many, many more pictures of the sports day at the site -- followed by a few shots of bodies on the school yard after the earthquake. The descriptions (in Chinese) on the page talk about "Beichuan Middle School's Final Day of Smiles" etc. I include them because they are, again, true to the kind of thing I've seen in provincial China -- and different from what most Westerners imagine when they think of the country.
UPDATE: The man in the first photo is indeed a teacher, Tang Gaoping; the pictures are from his blog, which attracted wide interest in China after the earthquake. Then on Sunday, six days after the quake, it was confirmed that Tang and his students had gotten out of the rubble and were alive. Details in English here.
* Update on limitless supply of pictures: Roland Soong has posted 300 on his EastSouthWestNorth blog.
Earthquake update #3: Pandas
Earlier I mentioned reassuring first reports that the staff of the Wolong panda reserve, which was very close to the epicenter of last week's earthquake, had escaped unharmed, along with their 60+ animals.
The reports seem to have been prematurely cheering. The full extent of what has happened in Wolong, as in much of the rest of Sichuan province, is not yet clear. But Pandas International, the US-based group that I mentioned in my article last year about the panda reserve, is amassing information from the Wolong area indicating that buildings, people, and pandas probably all have suffered considerable damage. It would be remarkable if it were otherwise, considering how close to the quake center the reserve is -- and what the buildings under construction looked like when my wife and I visited last summer:
Panda International's latest reports also indicate that three of the reserve's pandas are missing. To put this in perspective: so far, no panda raised in captivity has ever survived in the wild. Also, by the most generous estimates, the world's total population of giant pandas, captive and wild, is well under 2,000. If the number of missing Chinese people were proportional to the number of missing pandas, some two million people would be unaccounted for.
I previously posted various pictures of the animals at the reserve. In light of the news that some or many of the staff members at the reserve may be killed or missing, here is a glimpse of what some of them looked like last year.
I should probably feel this way about people in every foreign country, but (as stated earlier) the truth is I mainly feel it about China; while the throngs of humanity are overwhelming, the people are vividly individual. Those at the reserve, many of whom I remember, and those in surrounding cities and schools we met.
About donations: I don't know enough about the practices of Chinese-based charities to be confident in any recommendation about good places to give. (It has been hard to go wrong with Oxfam over the years.) I am looking into this and will report further.
In the meantime, I am confident enough about the work of Pandas International to say that they have done important, worthy work and deserve support. Not to the exclusion of helping people, obviously, but as an important part of China's and the world's heritage.
Earthquake update #2: Media
Three days ago I mentioned this report from the Pew representative in Beijing (Deborah Fallows, who is also my wife) about Chinese media play on the earthquake.
Here is her followup report on Pew's site, about Chinese TV and internet coverage through the three-minute national period of mourning today.
Earthquake update #1: USGS
Via Tom Hill, whose first-day account from Chengdu I mentioned here, and also Edward Goldstick, this map from the U.S. Geological Survey showing peak-intensity shaking areas during last week's earthquake:
That USGS page has links to many other revealing and sobering maps, for instance this one about population exposure during the earthquake.
It is also worth comparing the peak-intensity map to this one, from Pandas International, showing the location of panda reserves and remaining wild panda territory.
Pew blog on Chinese media coverage of earthquake
I am out of China for a few more days. While away I have seen this report on the Pew Research Center site, from the head of the Pew Research Internet Project's China operation, on what she is seeing about the earthquake on Chinese TV and reading on the internet.
(Disclosure: the author is my wife.)
Masses, and individuals, in China
The human scale of almost anything in China is predictably shocking. I go to a city I'd never heard of -- say, Zibo -- and learn that it has about as many people as Chicago. I go to a city I have heard of and learn that estimates of its population are accurate only within a couple million. And of course we now have the staggering figures coming out from Sichuan province and its surroundings -- about 900 children trapped in one school, tens of thousands missing in another town, whole villages being swallowed up by landslides. America has never known mass tragedy on this scale -- or even on a pro-rated version of this scale. China has of course known it many times.
Here is a classroom picture from last fall, at a high school outside Sichuan province but close to the earthquake zone. These are the kinds of schools and classrooms you're seeing in "after" pictures now. (Yes, there is a ringer in this picture, whom I couldn't photo-shop out.) These are the kinds of children who have been affected.
Here, from a middle school, is a dormitory room where 18 girls sleep each night and eat all their meals. They sleep side by side, nine on the bottom bunk and nine on the top, with their heads to the left of the picture and their feet to the center. All of their clothes and belongings are in the gray lockers in the right background.
Some of the students at that school. Although multi-child families are more common in rural areas than in the cities, most of the children involved in the earthquake would have been their parents' only child.:
The masses in China are overwhelming; the people in them are vividly and irrepressibly individual. Via Rebecca MacKinnon, here are some ways to contribute to relief efforts in China.
Earthquake accounts from foreigners in Chengdu
After the break, two first-person accounts of the earthquake and its aftermath, from foreigners in Chengdu. These are long and, to me, vivid in their detail, but skip past if you're not interested. I'm providing them here for real-time documentary purposes.
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Continue reading "Earthquake accounts from foreigners in Chengdu" »
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