With everything I left out of my blog, I’m amazed at myself for missing this one. Condoleezza Rice and Christopher Hill, the Asst. Secretary of State, came to Sichuan to visit the earthquake epicenter in Wenchuan and the Country Director for Peace Corps China made arrangements to meet with them before they left. We met them, albeit briefly, at the airport seeing them off on Air Force 3. Here’s the best shot of us.

Look closely at the sign!

My cousin Jenny and I said goodbye to Aunt Candy at the base of Tiger Leaping Gorge. She was headed back to Lijiang to catch her flight to Shanghai, then the States. Jenny and I were to take a bus to Zhongdian, or Shangri-la, or Shang-ge-le-la, or some form of these names. Zhongdian is still in Yunnan province but at the the Northwest corner very close to Tibet and has a well-knownTibetan monastery a little outside of the city limits. The weather was beautiful and I attempted to capture the blue skies and clouds in most of my pictures.

The trip back to Chengdu was more of a challenge. We ended up taking a minibus back to Lijiang, then a sleeper bus to Panzihua (Sichuan province) for 8 hours. We got in to Panzihua at 1 AM, just missing the 1:30 train to Chengdu so we stayed at cheap hotel across the street from the train station where we witnessed some of the Panzihua nightlife winding down. At around noon we got on our train to Chengdu with hard seats for 10 hours. Fun times. We were lucky enough to be able to spend most of the trip in the dining car chatting with the folks and playing cards.

I trudged through June finishing up finals, the methods of which are regulated by my university. I have some wiggle room when it comes to final grades of course but the way finals are given, no say. As it is an oral exam, I listened to roughly 200 students for 10 minutes and graded them on the spot. Because I only have 200 students, some teachers have almost that many in one class, I should not complain but when listening to the same answers over and over multiplies any number of interviews by at least 10. I made it extra excruciating for myself, because I love putting myself through torture, by splitting up these 200 10-minute interviews over the course of 6 days. I’ll let you do the math on that one.

A few days after finals I was able to welcome the first of my 2 visitors that week. First came Aunt Candy, an Aunt who I had never met before because she was the aunt of the cousin that was coming to see me, and the vacation was set to begin. (No, Aunt Candy is NOT my mother I know this relation is confusing, even to me. Ready? She’s my cousin from my mom’s side, my uncle’s daughter. My uncle’s wife has a half-brother and Aunt Candy is married to him.) Things went well, especially for not knowing each other before we met in my China. I showed her the sights in Chengdu, even the pandas, and had one fun evening eating hotpot with the other volunteers in Chengdu. Then came my cousin Jenny, and the next day we were off to Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan province to the south of Sichuan province. Before we got on the plane we had a home-cooked lunch provided by my sitemate’s wife which turned out to be a good send-off as she showed them how to make some classic Sichuanese dishes.

The flight was delayed a few hours, per usual in Zhong/guo. But when we got out of the Lijiang airport I could tell this was going to be a good trip. The sky was blue, there were white fluffy clouds (I’ve really missed clouds this year) and the air was pleasant to breathe. After finding the bus to the Old Town, where our hostel was, we realized this was no average old town, Chengdu as a few of these peppered on its outskirts, and there was a reason it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s a charming city with all the buildings in the Dai minority architectural style but when you look closer you find that all these charming buildings merely house numerous shops and restaurants. Hello, I’m here for tourists. But it was worth it nonetheless.

After Lijiang we took a bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge, rented a car up the Gorge and found Sam’s Guesthouse in Walnut Garden which is a place on the Gorge great for some light hiking and hanging out.

I will write a post soon. So much has been going on and time has been limited for me to sit in front of the computer to actually write down my reflections.

Tonight my goal is to write a decent post to my poor blog.

With classes over and 2 weeks to send in my grades, I’ve been doing a bit of procrastination this week. Up until 2 weeks ago, I had all the grades figured out and left space for the final exam grade, the final thing to do was to tally up the score and print them out. Alas, this last 5% of my grading took me longer than expected and I’ve been re-evaluating my whole grading process (read: I’ve been over-thinking it).

Last Saturday was my sitemate’s wedding. The ceremony was held outside of Chengdu in Wenjiang, his wife’s hometown. My sitemate was already married, they got the official paperwork and marriage certificate back in April but this was more of a celebration or reception than a ceremony, per the Chinese tradition. Four other volunteers and I bused it there, taking about an hour plus some, and when we arrived (late) we were greeted by my sitemate and his wife and I was then appointed 伴娘 or ‘bridesmaid’. But this meant that I took on the roles of not only the bridesmaid but also the ring bearer and flower girl. I waited with the best man (my sitemate’s wife’s cousin) with my sitemate’s wife by the entrance of the wedding banquet hall which was mostly filled with friends, family, and coworkers of my sitemate’s wife’s father. From the start, my sitemate’s wife was telling me that the whole ceremony was what her father wanted and there were many “discussions” over the whole thing; I guess wedding planning disputes cross all borders. After they called the names of my sitemate, who was on the opposite side of the large banquet hall, the Titanic song blared through the speakers and that was our queue to walk down the red carpet that split the banquet hall in half. The best man and I followed the couple to the stage and tossed rose petals over their heads the entire way, while I consciously was holding on to the wedding rings scared I was going to throw them up in the air along with the rose petals. Don’t think I was ready for the bridesmaid responsibilities. Other than the potential loss of both wedding rings the wedding was fun, complete with a real mini disaster when the waitress was bringing them their first drink as a couple (Coca-cola) to the stage she took a bad step on the wobbly stage and poured the drinks on herself. The rest of the day was filled with eating, mahjong, cards, and more celebrating. *(There was an additional wedding of one of my closest friends from the States that same day. Wish I could have been to both.)

Today I went for a run where I realize that I should have lugged my camera with me. In 45 minutes of running I witnessed…
-22 cranes, suburban China’s most treasured animal (construction cranes that is)
-Man riding an electric bike while crossing his legs and smoking a cigarette
-A dog with 3 ½ legs trying to beat me
-Old man with huge comb-over trying to protect me while I ran… he followed me for the last 20 minutes of my run, always looking back if he got ahead of me
-4 times “helloooo” was shouted my way
-Almost ran over on Airport Rd. 2 times (a good day! I usually am almost run over at least 5 times during a run)
-Ran down far enough to realize the real reason there is a construction project going on in middle of the road I live in… they are building a road divider filled with random plants
-2 baby bottoms

Better late than never.

Dragon Boat Festival was last weekend, along with my 28th birthday! I was grateful for the extra day to celebrate both. The Chinese government added some new holidays to the year which shortening the already celebrated national holidays and Dragon Boat was one that was added, along with Tomb Sweeping, and a few others.

Here are some pics from the fest downtown Chengdu near the Jinjiang River. There were crowds of people lighting the paper sky lanterns and setting them off in drones. The sky was filled with “red shooting stars” (as we were told to look for). And below, the river was peppered with lotus-shaped candles. Excuse the very bad photography… one of these days I will get a nice camera.

For homework many weeks ago, I asked my students to write what their ideal date would be. I found this one touching and i jotted it down in my notebook to eventually write on my blog. With all the sadness from the earthquake hovering over Sichuan I find this short paragraph especially poetic.

“In a noisy place, although there are many people, we still find each other. And at that time, we can only see each other in our own eyes. So gradually we go out of the crowds hand in hand and totally don’t notice others. And then we come to a romantic place and enjoy the honey atmosphere. Finally we enjoy ourselves.”

(Note: this was written by a male student)

Monday was a return to “normal” after our week-long of all things earthquake. By then, most of my students returned to their dorms and were for the most part ready to be back in class.

Monday was also the one week anniversary of the 8.0 quake. I was in the same classroom with the same class when all of Sichuan province got a big surprise. Monday also marked the nationwide 3-day mourning for the earthquake victims. At 2:28 pm, the time the earthquake hit, the whole country was to stand for 3 minutes of silence. The class started at 2 o’clock so I busied my students by having them make poems, songs, or stories relating to the earthquake. I told them they would have to present their work in front of class after the moment of silence. Mostly my student’s enjoyed this release from the everyday activities I have them do in class. They had been away from class for nearly a week and I wanted to ease them back into the flow of things. When 2:28 came around my students and I stood up and bowed our heads. We knew, of course, that it was time for the moment of silence because we heard car horns and some new age music (sounds of strong gusts of wind and rain along with slow, almost creepy, noises) come on over the loud speakers. There was no silence and after about a minute of the new age music came the campus radio talk where we heard announcements for the next 2 minutes of silence. To me, I couldn’t use this time to be with my students and ponder the unreal affects the earthquake has had on us all, although 3 minutes is not long enough for this but it’s a start, instead it was a time of forced you-will-be-sad mourning.

Later on in the day there was a ‘warning’ from the TV and over SMS messages that another earthquake of magnitude 6 or 7 would come. I was not too worried because I was unsure of the realities of predicting earthquakes. The 8.0 quake came pretty much unannounced and I don’t remember after living in Tai.wan anyone mentioning that earthquakes could be pinpointed in the future, aftershocks maybe. However, this caused mass hysteria on my campus. My sitemate and I were warned thousands of times of the pending earthquake, classes were canceled for the next day I found out from a 1:30 AM call from my waiban, we were told to sleep outside. My sitemate took to the news the same as I did, we took extra caution to leave the door open in case we needed to evacuate but that’s about it, we did not sleep outside. Whenever we would get little aftershocks people would rush out of buildings. People were pitching tents again on campus and on the sidewalks or sleeping in cars. Because of the advanced ‘warning’ people were also trying to get out of Chengdu which I heard caused massive traffic jams that night.

When the earthquake didn’t happen, then the story changed. The earthquake would now hit either Tuesday or Wednesday. Classes were canceled on Wednesday as well. People are still sleeping outside. We’re still waiting.

To reflect on this, it’s easy to see mine and my sitemate’s reaction to the warnings and our neighbors, colleagues, student and other Chengduren around me. My sitemate is from Southern California and has lived through his fair share of earthquakes like me. The rest of the people around us have never lived through such an event and are truly frightened, especially my students, predominately freshman, where this is their first time away from home. They hear news from the TV, radio, friends, mothers, and take them at their word. They sleep outside, keeping each other awake, waiting for the quake they were told would come. Since the sky already fell on them once, why not believe it would happen again? Whereas my sitemate and I hear the news, think about what’s really happening, and adjust our lives slightly, just in case, and going about our night.

Tomorrow we will probably start classes again although I don’t have any classes Thursday and Friday, only office hours. Someone from the Peace Corps is going to visit tomorrow and inspect my apartment. No aftershocks today… at least not yet. Here’s an interesting face I saw on CCTV 9, the English television station in China:
“As of Wednesday noon, 162 aftershocks measuring 4 or higher on the Richter scale had been monitored since the 8-magnitude earthquake that rocked southwest China’s Sichuan Province on May 12, according to the China Seismological Bureau.
Quakes between 5 and 5.9 on the Richter scale numbered 26, while quakes above 6 on the Richter scale numbered 4.”

This Saturday I’m running a half marathon with a few other volunteers, students, expats, and whoever else decides to go for it. Because of the recent earthquake hitting our home we have decided to run for a good cause, the China Children and Teenagers Fund. If you would like to donate, all money goes directly to the charity. The China Children and Teenagers Fund has already donated 2 million yuan to earthquake relief efforts. Every little bit counts!

http://www.justgiving.com/chengduhalfmarathon

Regarding Standards in School Buildings
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080516/wl_asia_afp/chinaquakeschoolchildren

On Openness and Readiness
http://feeds.gothamistllc.com/click.phdo?i=72f7bf539929e184cf6fcd54b63a455b

More Tremors
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080517/ap_on_re_as/china_earthquake;_ylt=AivlpRnS2RZHrP5d.vcI8gruOrgF

Death Toll by Region
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/15/content_8173136.htm

Geology, Engineering and Earthquake Damage
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90415659

On Foreign Aid
http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=766356

The Disaster Zone
http://time-blog.com/china_blog/2008/05/in_the_disaster_zone.html?xid=rss-china