This is the first of three notes that were written at the time of the Sichuan earthquake and that set my mind thinking about beginning a Blog. Now i have finally got around to starting one I have decided to include them...
I have just arrived back in China, having spent my first week outside the country, in over 18 months, at the exact time China experienced it's worst disaster for many years. The Chinese words that have constantly greeted me on my return are "earthquake", "afraid", "frightening" and "brave". The latter has strangely been used a few times to refer to me, because i am told i have chosen to return here at this difficult time. I ofcourse am not brave, I am simply returning to the country where I now live and that I have grown to love. I did though recently read a story about a group of teachers that protected their primary school pupils through the worst of the quake and then led all of them over the mountains to safety. They too claimed not to be brave, just doing they said what anybody would do. It was their responsibility as teachers, they noted, to protect their children. Today I heard about a grand-mother found already dead but bent over, sheltering the grand-daughter beneath her who was still alive. Some forms of bravery are harder to deny than others.
The images on the TV networks here revolve around the positive response of the Chinese nation to this disaster, an impression of a nation standing up and facing the worst. The images were broadcast across all networks and on any available screen; the length of my internal flight from Shanghai, on every household TV and on the huge outdoor screen infront of Xi'an's shining new Exhibition Centre, watched by many. A western media source I read in Britain questioned the state led interpretation of the news, that it did not show situations where the medical staff and army were overwhelmed but concentrated on the positive scenarios and stories. This reminded me of a recent incident, not widely known amongst the people of Xi'an, concerning an aborted suicide bomb attempt in central Xi'an. A Chinese friend of mine questioned the need to spread the news of this event, noting it would only be negative and that one random, one off occurrence by somebody "crazy" would worry too many people, proportionally greater than the event itself. The same rosy sentiment could be seen in the media portrayal of some aspects of the earthquake. The whole picture may be missed but a concern for the positive and the upbeat is not, this is a theme I may well return to, as it is something that can be felt on a day-day basis here and is certainly not all bad, taking it as I am doing at face value.
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