The rest of that series is here. Some photographs from the Magnum photographer Patrick Zachmann are here.
ponderings of a pococurante read more »
Archives for posts with tag: wenchuan
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.
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 not the quality of the product that matters to me, or even the quality of the photography contained inside, but rather just the fact that it’s a pictorial record of what happened, and that’s just something that I feel I ought to have with me. Order it from Amazon China. Look at more images from the book on this blog. There are some other photography books on the earthquake, one of them was a big coffee table one that I saw in the same bookstore but I didn’t find it online. But it may be called 震殇5·12(崔益军汶川大地震摄影纪实) and be purchasable from Amazon as well.
Technorati Tags: china, wenchuan, earthquake, photography, books, art, culture, news, tragedy, disaster, photojournalism, documentary
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 about the uneven economic development in the area.
过度发展招来泥石流汶川城从原先的5000人发展到如今4.5万人，修路、建厂，开发过程中破坏了很多山体
地震后，四川省地矿局的刘洪涛进入汶川考察。他在对县城所有的地质灾害点进行摸底后发现，由于县城逐渐扩张，直接引发县城周边的30多处地质灾害点。“这些隐患多数是人类活动造成的。”
上世纪50年代，汶川县城由绵虒镇搬迁到如今的县城所在地威州镇。1984年，整个县城面积是91公顷，进入上世纪90年代县城面积扩展到3.5平方公里。人口从原先的5000人到后来的4.5万人。
建设部抗震救灾规划专家组驻阿坝州组长、清华大学建筑学院副院长尹稚来考察后说，汶川城这片土地只合适5000人生存。
刘洪涛在县城里看到多处地方，有削山建房屋的活动痕迹。他说，这样就容易造成山体下挫，发生滑坡。
汶川城在弹丸之地新修了校场街和校场横街，而后又修岷江路。地震前，县城还准备向南北扩展，合并雁门和绵虒一些区域，将人口发展到7万人。
地震中断了汶川的发展梦。
地震当天下午3点，汶川时代广场新开楼盘杨柳水岸小区原本约定业主收房。开盘前，地震发生。这个位于峭壁边上的住宅小区其一楼迅速被山上滚石淹没。如今，有些楼房的三四层楼已被埋于土下。
龙溪乡乡长周光辉说，希望地震后，过度发展与山区承载力的矛盾能引起重视，如果村民都回去原址重建，且不说目前还有没有地方可建，就是能重建，以后也会严重破坏山体，破坏生态环境，带来更多的地质灾害。他建议，对于他们龙溪乡，最多只能回去 1000多人，其他的地方进行封山育林。
The thing is that in the 1990s, as mining and other industries spurred economic development, the population grew from 5000 in in the mid-1980s to about 45,000 in the 1990s. However, the article claims that this parcel of land was not really meant to support more than 5000 people. The picture that I am getting from both this article and the other that I translated and read is that the headlong rush to economic development has complicated the issue. Now, what was once （and some believe still is) a good place to live faces numerous dangers–the mountains, the rivers, the buildings. In a situation like this, it’d be hard to convince any of the survivors to stay here. If I lived there I would feel less than safe, and that’s not even considering the trauma of being in the place where it all happened. It seems quite understandable that people would want to start afresh somewhere else. One of the people quoted in the article said that even if they had to rebuild their lives in Xinijiang, they would go and never look back.
Technorati Tags: wenchuan, sichuan, earthquake, houses, people, building, construction, environment, degradation, politics, chinese, disaster
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.
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 states that
the amount of people filing complaints with the local xin fang was, as of June 19,
already 679. I wonder if it was just poor planning, general idiocy, or corruption at work? Or
some combination of all of the above?
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 that teachers are humans too, and making it obligatory for the teacher to put life and limb in danger to protect students is going too far. They say it’s natural to want to protect the young, but to codify it might create more problems (of interpretation) than it would solve. Another more sarcastic reply was that perhaps they ought to include karate as part of teacher training from now on, and if you don’t pass muster you will not be qualified to be a teacher.
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 almost unreasonable demands for things. The experts are saying that this is because they lost so much in the earthquake and are now in the phase of wanting to be “compensated”, so they make demands of people, telling them to do this and that (including dumping their urine, making them food, and washing their clothes). Some of the victims that have been in therapy are not even willing to leave the clinics and hospitals, even though they are, for the most part, OKthe experts say this means they are still afraid of facing reality, which means they are not in fact completely OK.
I think the healing process is going to be different for each person, and I certainly pity them, because each one has a lot of struggling with demons to do. Technorati Tags: earthquake, wenchuan, mental health, PTSD, therapy, counseling, aid, relief, hospital, trauma, pain, Chinese
So it looks more serious than I had thought…still you wonder what the fuck people are protesting about. Chinese people are really oversensitive, I mean Kungfu Panda is not much different than Mulan or anything of that sort…I don’t know why they are protesting all of the sudden. Of course, with the earthquake, everyone is especially sensitive about anything relating to Sichuan and probably feel, understandably, the need to protect what they perceive as the dignity of the place…
Technorati Tags: wenchuan, sichuan, chengdu, china, boycott, kungfu panda, jack black, dustin hoffman, film, wenchuan, film , catastrophe, disaster, relief,
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 as typhoons, droughts, etc.
So the article then delves into the issue of insurance…specifically natural disaster insurance. The problem, as with anything in China, if is there a legal system that can support it, and then of course come the issues of the particular insurance models that will spring up to compete for the buyer’s money. But this article calls for the government to make haste in setting up the proper legal protocols so that instead of just having the government and the victims “split” the costs of the damages, a third-party–the insurance companies–start playing a part. The article cites 9-11 as an example…
Technorati Tags: earthquake, insurance, wenchuan, sichuan, china, chinese, 9-11, accident, disaster, history