As I was walking the streets of Singapore yesterday, I came across a photo exhibition with pictures of struggeling people and the remains from the earthquake. (almost 80 000 has been found dead by now).
Quite shaken up, I started thinking of Song Pan, of the narrow mountain roads we travelled on to get there, of the red cheeked people, in the little mountain villages, we saw and said hello to during our trip, of the poor conditions they were living in even before the earthquake - how are they doing now? are they even alive? Also thought of what if earthquake had hit a day or two before it did... How would I have been doing? Would I be alive now?
When I got home to my very secure and nice hotel room, I searched the internet for a picture or something from Song Pan. Wanted to see what this old and pretty little town looks like now. Didn't find any pictures, but found this article written some days ago, which I think describes where I could have been, but more importantly, where the people of China are...:
Past the mangled cars, the wreckage of cliff-hugging homes and boulders the size of tractor trailers, the winding 40-mile road that connects Chengdu to the mountain towns of Wenchuan County comes to a sudden, nearly vertical end at this speck of a village.
On one side lay Yingxiu, where nearly every building was flattened by the earthquake. On the other, Song Pan, where a 22-year-old music student, stood anxiously, trying to find out if his father was alive. In between were five miles of rock and splintered trees that spilled into the roaring Min River 400 feet below.
“He’s strong, stronger than me, so I’m sure he’s O.K.,” said Mr. Song, who was carrying a backpack stuffed with blankets, crackers and packets of dried beef, his father’s favorite. “If I could only get to the other side.”
Since the earthquake, thousands of soldiers have been working day and night to restore Highway 213, a serpentine lifeline that links a dozen devastated towns and cities at the epicenter of China’s deadly earthquake. Even in the best of times, a drive along the highway can be a nerve-wracking experience.
The next morning, the soldiers, aided by bulldozers and excavators, had cleared more than 20 miles of roadway. Crushed cars and trucks had been heaved aside, steel plates thrown over missing sections of bridge and tons of earth shoveled over the edge of the precipice.
But at Baihuatan, the engineers were thwarted by a huge landslide. “Only a fool would try to make a road out of that,” said Wen Ziwei, a construction foreman whose task was to find a way to bring food, tents and medicine to the thousands of people trapped in Yingxiu, where 7,700 of the town’s 10,000 people were believed to have died.
The solution, engineers decided, was to create a new road along the remnants of an old riverside footpath that was abandoned after the highway’s completion in the 1970s.
When Mr. Song heard on television that the new road was nearly done, he decided he could wait no longer. Joined by two friends, he began the nine-hour hike from Dujiangyan. As he walked, he held out a sign with his father’s name, hoping someone might have some news. “My mother is worried sick,” he said.
All around him, scores of other people were on a similar journey, although not everyone was looking for relatives.
There was a medical student from Hong Kong on a quest to save lives, and two Buddhist nuns from Henan Province in central China hoping to provide spiritual aid to the stricken. “We can’t let people think they have been forgotten,” said Zhao Qifeng, 46, who wore a cassette player around her neck that was playing Buddhist chants.
Then there was Zhou Guiwang, 41, an English teacher from the northern city of Shijiazhuang who became tired of sitting at home and watching the television footage of desperate survivors.
So he boarded a plane without telling his family where he was going. “I think I can help these people psychologically,” Mr. Zhou said, standing at the impasse with dozens of others as an earth-moving machine struggled against the mud and rock. He spent two days in Dujiangyan, a city at the edge of the mountains, but there were so many volunteers, he felt useless. “I want to go somewhere that is a challenge, where other people are afraid to go.”
Every 10 or 15 minutes, the excavator would pause, giving dozens of people an opportunity to dart along the edge of the unfinished road. The troops ordered them to stay put but it was no use.
Fu Hong, a 19-year-old horse breeder, came trudging from the other side, his face gaunt and his clothing wet and smeared with dirt.
After the earthquake buried seven of his friends, he scrambled to the top of a mountain and hunkered down in the forest. For three nights he sat numb, impervious to the rain. “At least up there, nothing could fall on my head,” he said.
In the end, hunger drove him back to Yingxiu, but he was haunted by the death all around him; an elementary school had collapsed on 400 children, and the constant rumbling of aftershocks made it impossible to sleep. “I had to get out of there,” he said as he passed by. “My family must think I’m dead.”
Chen Biao stood on the far side of the unfinished road, debating whether to cross. He set out that afternoon from Chengdu to look for an uncle; his mother refused to let him go, but he sneaked off anyway.
But as he glanced up at the overhanging rocks, and then down at the roiling Min, he was having second thoughts. “Please take my picture and write down my name,” he asked a stranger. “That way if I die, my family will have some idea where I was.”
By 4 p.m., the last few yards of road were complete. Word went out to the caravan of military trucks waiting on the other side but before they could edge through the mud, an avalanche roared down, burying 20 yards of new road. By some miracle, no one was hurt.
Mr. Wen, the construction foreman, jumped into the seat of the excavator and went back to work. Dozens of soldiers, most no older than 19, climbed the hill above and tossed down rocks to fill in a waterlogged stretch of road.
Li Wenbing, a soldier from Jinan in eastern China, said he and his comrades had been working for five days straight, their only sustenance rations of biscuits and instant noodles. “I’ve been dreaming of a bowl of rice,” he said.
Within two hours, the debris had been cleared. As daylight began to fade, a shout went out to the crowds waiting on either side. The trucks started up their engines, and a flood of people set off in both directions. No one dared to look up.
