Sichuan Earthquake From Xi'an II.

This is the second of the three posts included after the event.

Another week on from the earthquake and the schools have been intermittently closed as a precaution against any more tragic loss of young life. To the outsider returning it has seemed at times a little of an over-reaction, especially when a teacher's nervous disposition is enough to empty a classroom of children and subsequently a whole school. There are many people spread around the city still choosing to live outside their buildings; they are living on wooden mats on the pavement, in tents and under tarpaulins slung between park trees.  These scenes have become quite normal, with the same friendly Ma Jiang and Chinese chess (Xiang Qi) continuing to be played.  However, today i got a glimpse of what kind of fear they must have felt from watching and feeling the original quake.  Xi'an today experienced a minor tremor but enough to shake the walls of the restaurant I was sitting in. Diners around us quickly dashed for the exits, while my companion and I calmly noted the feeling of the tremor, intrigued by the uniqueness of the sensation, before beginning to wander from the restaurant. We hadn't reached the stairs when the shaking ceased, so we simply returned to our table. Though a minor shake comparatively it did make me aware of the quite disconcerting feeling of something being quite out of your control and that could have devastating consequences, in this instance the walls and floor of the restaurant you are in literally shaking and consequently shaking you. 

The only time i can remember having a similar loss of control, though without the potential effect of devastation, was during my PGCE year teaching in an Inner-City school.  I had been told that this would happen and that it was important how you react to it, but in those moments when you look about at your class and they are not paying any attention to you, and you don't know quite how to do anything about it, it feels mighty humbling.  The significant aspect of this experience was that it hit me a little later. It wasn't until I returned home sometime that night that I felt suddenly quite emotionally upset by the experience, i hadn't even been thinking about it, the feeling just crept up and hit me. It is not often we experience, even for a moment, a feeling of having absolutely no control over something we should, and expect, to have control over.  This earthquake has had that lasting effect here, not only on the lives and minds of the inhabitants of the worst effected areas in Sichuan but in all those areas that felt the initial quake and these subsequent tremors. The second realization is the dreadful situation that most of those families are going to face in the coming months, as the wet season sets into Sichuan; the bereaved, injured, homeless and landless have so much more to face than the deep psychological shock of being thrust into an horrifying experience, over which they had no control.