The Sichuan Earthquake

I've always wanted a pair of green jeans. And so recently, when I was visiting Nanjing, I couldn't help myself when I saw a pair at the local Baleno, which is a store like the Gap here in China.

In China, when you buy pants, you only have to worry about width. I don't think I have bought a pair of pants here that is the correct length. It's easy enough--after buying your pants, you take them over to the tailor in the Xijiahui district of Shanghai, across the street from the used cell phone repair shops, and he cuts them to the right size. All for 5 yuan (I think that is 75 cents US). What a deal.

He likes me because I always try to crack jokes in Chinese with him. A few times, I asked him to make the waist smaller because "I just gave birth to a baby". I didn't have change last time and he just said, pay me the extra kuai (quarter) next time. Today, I give it to him. "I forgot all about it," he says, laughing.

As he is altering my green jeans, I stand inside his shop (well, actually, it's his house--his "shop" is in the alley just outside his front door). His wife is getting dinner ready inside and I stand in front of the kitchen, where he has a small digital TV with the news on.

While she is soaking her slab of meat, she talks to me about the quake. I tell her that I feel for everyone, that I have been sad, too. I tell her my friends in the States who watch the news have been moved to tears, too.

We watch together and talk. Lately, I am interested in the news, am interested in TV. Since the age of 18, I have probably watched a total of 6 hours of TV (okay, maybe 10; and this definitely does not include movies rented at 5 Star Video in Berkeley).

One time, when my uncle was visiting my place in Berkeley with my cousin Oren, we came back to my apartment after dinner, where my uncle expected to sit on the sofa and watch TV. Unfortunately, I had neither a sofa or a TV. This threw him into an unexpected, momentary existential crisis, which resolved itself when he said, "Hey, Oren, go out and get me a New York Times."

Of course, the reason why I am watching TV these days is because of the earthquake. For the first few days after it happened, I felt out of the loop until I started watching the news. To see the images of rescuers, of victims, of the military and doctors at work--it's been quite important, and quite moving. There was a show with people from Sichuan, mostly young people, and each got up to talk. They all cried, and I cried, too.

Every channel is reporting on the Wenchuan earthquake. There are no commercials, no soap operas. Just the government news station, CCTV reporting on every channel with a few programs.

The rescue efforts look efficient and impressive. Everyone's impressed with the premier and president, as they are both out there in the field holding peoples' hands and kissing babies. "Don't worry, the government will take care of you," the president says to a child orphaned by the quake.

A broadcaster reports on the latest rescue efforts and then pauses to say, "We will overcome this, we are strong." Every day there are poems about the situation shown on TV, with a moving reading by someone in the background, someone who knows how to read poems in a moving way.

On Monday morning, my Chinese teacher announces to the class that the government has announced that at 2:28 in the afternoon, for three minutes, there will be a moment of silence to remember those dead in the quake. The next three days will be official days of mourning. All karaoke joints, bars, movie theatres, and the like will be closed.

This has never before happened in the history of modern China. My teacher says she is impressed--these days of mourning in the past have been used to mourn heads of State like Deng Xiaoping and Mao. But these three days are for ordinary, common people, more than 30,000 of them (update: as of May 26th, the death toll is 63,ooo with 24,ooo missing).

On the subway, some kids are wearing red stickers with the flag of China in a heart. I'm finding people here are super-patriotic. It is common for people these days to say, "What a bad year it has been--first the snow storms in winter, second the Tibet protests around the world, and now this." They feel they are terribly unlucky. They know that many in the world don't support them, and they are sensitive to this.

At this point, some might say it's time to talk politics. However, what I'd like to do instead is to just pray for everyone here--the people in Sichuan who have lost loved ones and friends, and for the people of China, who are desperately trying to turn their developing country into a modern society.