【The Age】Journey through an earthquake

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Journey through an earthquake
http://www.theage.com.au/world/journey-through-an-earthquake-20090508-axyo.html

John Garnaut, Beichuan May 9, 2009

IT'S nearly a year since the mountains on eachside of Beichuan sheared in half, spilling like a sandcastle over thesouthern corner of the town and pounding the northern streets withboulders. In a few short minutes, the town of 20,000 people wasbattered to a tangled mess of apartment block detritus, flattened busesand bodies squashed like insects.

The thousand voices that oncepleaded for help from within twisted buildings have long since fallensilent. At least half of the population is dead. But this massgraveyard has been cleansed and the primordial scale of thiscatastrophe is clearer.

The more elevated roads have been clearedby bulldozers, while the mangled lower streets have been blanketed withmetres of dirt after torrential rains. Glacial rivers of mud and rockare swallowing the city— from the ground up, as if completing theburial the earthquake had begun.

During every birthday, festivaland anniversary, a humble and quietly spoken man called Zheng Rentianpays his respects by driving his little van to the hillside that buriedhis father and 10 relatives who were dining together when the quakehit. He burns candles, incense and paper money in their honour andlights strings of firecrackers to ward off mischievous spirits.

Zheng,pronounced "Tsen" in this corner of Sichuan province, slows his van ashe passes Beichuan Middle School. Zheng's nephew had shot out the doorto safety when he felt the first pieces of ceiling strike his skin.

Parentsof the 600 students who were killed say the building was yet anothershoddy school made of "tofu" cement and steel. The school is the onlybuilding in the area that has its own security fence; it was erectedlast year to prevent any repeat of the "incident" in which grievingparents gathered and posted noticeboard photos of their missing sons.

Zhengeases his van past a long line of vendors selling earthquake touristmemorabilia. He gets out, flashes his residence card at a new gate andsecurity fence decked with razor wire, and descends by foot to the mainBeichuan town below.

The Beichuan of Zheng's memory is a mangled collage of miracles, resilience and wretched misery.

Bothof Zheng's parents were out of the house at 2.28pm on Monday, May 12,2008, when their village disappeared. Zheng stops to show us themissing mountainside, and debates with a bystander about where thevillage used to be.

"My mother was one step away from a fallingrock that would have killed her," he says. "My father was in arestaurant below — underneath where that tree is sticking out. Myeleven relatives at that table and a thousand other people would stillbe here today if that mountain had not collapsed on them."

Forthe Chinese Communist Party, the Sichuan earthquake that left 70,000people dead and 18,000 missing was a chance to show how it had evolvedfrom its cruel and callous past. On May 14 last year, at the top of thedescent into Beichuan town, Age sources watched amegaphone-wielding Premier Wen Jiabao providing a style of responsiveand humane leadership that Chinese people may have never known before.Today, residents spontaneously thank the central Government for itshelp and say how leaders have not forgotten them.

The Governmenthas channelled vast resources into reconstruction. Obliterated mountainroads have been re-laid.

Damaged dams have been reinforced. Adequatetemporary housing has been provided. Peasants in remote corners of thecounty are busily rebuilding. There are no signs that earthquakevictims lack for food or shelter. The local economy appears to bebooming.

But the earthquake has also revealed how far China is from the nation it wants to be. On May 14 and 15, The Agewatched People's Liberation Army soldiers loitering aimlessly andhelping themselves to goods looted from shattered shops, while thecries of trapped citizens rang out from buildings nearby.

Of thetens of thousands of soldiers in Beichuan in the days after the quake,the only ones we saw raise a sweat were a dozen who jostled in front ofPremier Wen as they rushed to an imaginary rescue for the benefit ofthe China Central Television camera.

All of the rescues wewitnessed were by local volunteers or orange-suited firefighters fromfar corners of the country.

Thousands died who should have been saved.And yet CCTV has played endless slow-motion footage of heroic soldiersat the service of the common people. For many in the Communist Party,the tragedy was primarily a propaganda opportunity.

At times ofstress, the party's overriding instinct is to protect itself. The staterevealed deeply rooted callousness and insecurity as it treatedgrieving parents as national security threats to be bought, intimidatedand silenced, while airbrushing discussion from local websites andmedia.

Shoddy schools are the most visible public grievance butnot the only one. In Beichuan county, the Government has appropriatedland to make it easier to rebuild from scratch. But residents arerefusing to sign compensation agreements because they have watchedwork-team and village leaders siphon funds and trade favours with otherrich and powerful residents. Animosity is channelled to localofficials, but it is Beijing that has chosen to preserve China's vastpyramid of unchecked administrative power.

Reconstruction is proceeding at impressive speed, but officials can't seem to shake their instincts for pantomime and deception.

Fiveweeks ago, locals heard that Premier Wen Jiabao was likely to returnfor Tuesday's anniversary. Thousands of workers were immediatelyenlisted to widen and beautify the highway from Mianyang Airport. Theroadside is being lined with instant grass and potted with fully growntrees, while workers add final touches of paint to the road-facingwalls of newly built homes.

Neat "model" villages, designed inthe local Qiang ethnic style, dot the flat land that can be easily seenfrom the tinted windows of a passing cavalcade.

Beichuan remainsunoccupied as officials debate whether to turn it into a museum. Insidethe gates, Zheng Rentian guides us through the town that he remembers.

Onthe right, utterly obscured by a rock-slide, was the car wash whereZheng used to clean his van. All of the workers ran out to open groundwhen they heard the mountain crumbling above them and none of them waskilled.

On the left, through an ornamental Chinese gate, was thebus depot and vegetable market. We overhear a mother telling her youngdaughter how a crowd had rushed out only be obliterated by bouldershurtling from the other direction.

"When I arrived, at 4pm on May12, I saw about 100 corpses lying here, with their skulls smashed andlimbs severed by falling boulders," Zheng says.

One survivor wasZheng's niece, Zheng Juhong, who had been trapped inside her mobilephone stall. She knew no one would come that evening.

"I just hugged myself tightly against the aftershocks and cried out for my mother a few times," she says.

Inthe morning, she heard people outside rescue someone else in thebuilding next to her. But they could not hear her cries. Later, twosoldiers heard her and pushed through a piece of pipe to provide freshdrinking water. She pleaded with them not to go. But they explained:"Without orders from above we cannot start that kind of rescue."

Latertwo volunteers came, one of whom she recognised, and they worked foreight hours with two firefighters, without a break, until they hauledher out late on Wednesday night.

At the centre of town we passthe other campus of Beichuan Middle School, where officials sent theirchildren. The school was obliterated by a rock-slide and 1000 childrenlost their lives.

Workers are now focusing their efforts onbuilding a memorial ground, erecting huge political banners and steelsupport frames for tilted buildings, which will soon provide a movingbackdrop for when visiting leaders front the cameras on Tuesday.

ZhengRentian points out the crushed bakery shop where his ever-smilingsister used to work. He had assumed she had been killed. But hissister, Zheng Xiaobi, had in fact being delivering bread to a nearbytown and had miraculously survived.

"I was hurrying back acrossthe river on my motorbike when the bridge started wavering so hard Icould hardly balance," she says. "A crack opened up in front of me andI accelerated to try and get across. Two old people were walking theother way towards me. I could see their faces as they screamed and Ifelt myself falling."

She doesn't know how she survived the20-metre fall with a collapsing bridge, without a helmet. When sheregained consciousness she heard the old man grieving for his friend.She tried to help but her ribs were broken and she couldn't move.

ZhengXiaobi now works at a new bakery in nearby Anchang town. It was her son(Zheng Rentian's nephew) who had survived the school collapse above thetown. He lost 50 of 70 classmates. Whenever he feels a tremor, he runsoutside, and often he refuses to sleep indoors.

Zheng Xiaobi hascome to see herself as lucky. "I was someone who loved to laugh andsmile," she says. "I lost my smile for half a year, but now I'm comingback to normal."

John Garnaut is China correspondent.

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自己认领，已经快翻译完了。

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