So I've been well taken care of lately by my extended family on both sides. Read: fed at regular intervals, pampered to no end. I'm fattening up nicely like Hansel in the Witch's cage in the Black Forest, except without the morbid German children's story subcontext. I know you love my fatty analogies.
I've also learned that family is like a time warp. I now know why Mao instigated the one-child policy. What's easier, locking one (probably male) sibling out of your room or finding refuge in a two-room farm house from 11 jabbering brats and their 15 cousins twice and thrice removed? Population control was just an afterthought. Breathing space is soo underrated people!
Not to say I didn't cherish every moment with family, just wish there were 58 hours to every day so I could get a chance to do some of the things I love to do. Like finishing one, ANY one, of the 6 or so books I've started but not followed through on as I have a problem with commitment, or speed reading through the 1000+ updates everyday on my google reader since my attention devoid disorder prescribes me to subscribe to a million blogs to quell my restless thirst for information. David Lebovitz fill me with you Judaio-Californian in Paris tales of pastries and beyond! Let White Lightning strike me with the space-aged fashion sense that is soo ahead of our times! JJJound had better stop posting because his inspirations and artistry are killing me rather violently.
The only breathing space I get is in the toilet, which is the squatting kind if you must know. Not ideal for reading a book or magazine in case you lose your balance. Also not a great breathing space at all.
My cousin is so much smarter than me. He's nine years old, and looks like a cartoon character. His head is huge. And he's got the brains to match. His parents never went to university, so the fact that he gets straight A's is a source of pride for everyone in the family. He loves geography and history, and can locate any country on a globe, as well as recite ancient Chinese war stories for hours without stopping to breathe. I can't even read the Introduction to Chinese History in Lonely Planet without getting lost in the Mings and Tangs, and that's in English.
One day he followed me around the house for a whole morning as I went about some chores, determined to educate me on the ancient battles of the Three Kingdoms. Lol my cousin has a loose vocal cord or something, so he sounds like a 4 year old girl. Mean, maybe, but love is tough. So it was like having a prepubescent all girls choir sing to me in Chinese prose, rising to a strong forte when I started blowdrying my hair and with determined conviction while stooping outside the washroom door, waiting patiently for me to come back out. Now that's a kid with a future.
Onto the next leg of my adventures. I went with my parents to Dujiangyan yesterday, a town 60km northwest of Chengdu formerly known for its Irrigation Project undertaken in the 3rd century BC by famed engineer Li Bing. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The gist of it is that Sichuan was frequently subject to floods and draughts before this point and his genius ideal was to split the Min River into two and divide the force of the water mechanically to irrigate millions of hectares of land and feed millions of people as a result.
But today it is known to China as one of the places hit hardest by the fateful earthquake of 5/12/08. At least 70,000 people died in one day within a depth of 19km, and those are just the KNOWN deaths. Of those, 10,000 were in Dujianyan. There are still 20,000 missing people reported to be buried underneath the rubble that may never be found. This is my hometown, and basically my blood. I had to go there, and see and feel the force that has so shaken this nation.
I remember when I first heard. It was my first day at work this summer and I was still panting from grabbing morning sandwiches for the traders and trying to focus on all the flashing ticker symbols when a Bloomberg newsflash popped on the screen saying :"Deadly Earthquake of Magnitude 8 Hits Sichuan". I read it five times to be sure and rushed to email my parents, who had already been on the phone trying to reach our family, but to no avail since all telephone lines were down in the province. By a stroke of sheer luck, my family was spared. But the details of the aftermath haunted my worst nightmares, and I wished I wasn't so far removed from the carnage and that I could have been less useless.
What is most tragic about this earthquake is that it hit hard an area that has been completely neglected by China's economic boom. The landscape was a classic illustration of the widening disparity between the urban bourgeousie and rural poor, a problem enhanced by poor and expensive healthcare. It has also left 5 million people homeless and 7000 schoolrooms collapsed, burying lives extra precious because of the one-child policy.
I have seen a dvd of the earthquake aftermath and relieft efforts. The footage was completely disturbing and graphic, but desensitizing myself to a degree to the images was necessary for me to remove myself from this North American pedestal, one that we allow ourselves to get propped up on far too often. How often I had put down the newspaper in the summer, left a link my mother had sent me unopened, to be able to finally push the thoughts of carnage to the back of my conscience. But what struck me the most about the relief efforts was the selflessness of the surviving villagers as they rescued strangers buried under the rubble. It would often take the cooperation of fifteen people to lift a single person out of the rocks. They moved swiftly and without hesitation despite risk of strong aftershocks that resulted in further casualties. The nation I previously described where people are ruthless about cutting lines and waging road wars had disappeared with the collapse of their collective infrastructure and realization of the frailty of their individual backbones. Of this I was particularly proud.
I know this post took a somber turn towards the end, but I had to.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment