I spent the week or so prior to the chinese new year in Anchang and the Beichuan area, which was one of the hardest hit and in which there are many quake victims living in temporary housing. I talked a bunch of them and in general just observed their lives there. I will write something [...]

The rest of that series is here. Some photographs from the Magnum photographer Patrick Zachmann are here.

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OK, so this is not terribly interesting in itself but just interesting tidbit, especially for those that love animals!
You can see more of the pictures here.

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I saw this book when i was in the Xingguang Photographic Equipment Center on Luban Lu, in one of the bookstores on the third floor. The book is called 震动中国(百名摄影记者震区全记录 and cost 80 rmb, but I felt cheap at the moment, so didn’t end up buying it. I think it’s a good book, but it’s [...]

The debate rages on, with many Wenchuan local residents, according to a survey, inclined
to get out of there while they can. This article claims that out of 768 people surveyed, over 90% of them wanted to leave and rebuild their homes and their lives somewhere else. There’s a passage that’s particular revealing as it talks [...]

This little piggy made it through days and days after the earthquake without dying, mostly by licking coal,
which had some moisture on it. And of course, he’s now a celebrity. These are some nice pictures of him/her.

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Just saw this on Sina. In the city of Ya’An in Sichuan has “fired” three township level party
secretaries and given serious warnings to several other cadres. This was over irregularities
in how the relief efforts were coordinated and handled; for example, how things were
distributed, the speed and efficiency with the work was done, etc. The article [...]

The Ministry of Education in China is getting around to revising its code of ethics of teachers, and this time around they are thinking about including “protecting students,” a move no doubt in part spurred by the memory of teachers protecting students during the Wenchuan earthquake. Some who have argued against such a move say [...]

This is another article from Bokee about the ongoing mental health counseling work going on in China for survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake. The article describes how some aid workers are somewhat baffled and disappointed by the behavior of the survivors they are working with. In general, they keep seeming to want things, to make [...]

This Xinhua article comes up with some interesting statistics: in the last 300 years, there were 50 natural disasters that claimed over 100,000 lives, and of those, 26 were in China, with the total number of dead numbering 103 million, 68% of the total amount.
Over 1/10 of the earthquakes happen in China, as well [...]