Betrayed by the Ground Upon Which They Stood

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about the May 12th earthquake for quite some time. We hear the news, we lament the tragedy, we might even pray, but when the buildings stop falling, the cameras stop rolling, and the tragedy of millions is eclipsed by the hopes of two presidential candidates. Yet, as we drove further out of the city, the earthquake slowly and incrementally took form in my mind.

All around Chengdu was the shadow of a memory; a cracked wall, a half-built house whose builders suddenly had more important things to build, small things that all hinted at … something … and yet the city ground on. Even now I sit at a restaurant with a painting of a cowboy on the wall, listening to salsa music as I wait for my biscuits and gravy. What earthquake?

We left the highways for cracked asphalt roads, and the memory no longer seemed so distant. We passed temporary houses for those whose lives had been just as rent and broken as the landscape upon which they lived, and the memory now became a present reality. The earth stopped shaking long ago. When would they?

Finally, when we arrived at our destination, the earthquake gained a face. It gained a hundred faces.

The village leader was quick to smile, but it barely touched his eyes. There was genuine joy there, but it was not like the thin joy that I experience whenever I am able to forget my problems. It was a hard-won joy that must look out every day at the senseless destruction, and still say that there are things to be thankful for. The generosity of others. The buildings now being slowly and cautiously erected. Life. Sometimes it takes death to remind us that as long as there is life, there is always something to be thankful for.

~~~

I met three brothers: the eldest, confined to a wheelchair, and two twins born a few years later. When the world shook and the house fell, the family thought the eldest crushed by the rubble, but found him 16 hours later. 16 hours, without food and water, in a body that could not save itself, and the world thought him dead. Their father, the village secretary (government representative), had a subtly different look to his eyes. They too, were eyes that had seen much grief, but they were the eyes of a survivor. He didn’t smile as much, and the tough joy of the village leader was replaced by grim determination. Life had hit him hard more than once, but here he stood, and there was work to be done. There were houses to be built, mouths to feed; there was a village that needed his resilience.

~~~

We went up to the village for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the children were out of school. Running up and down the street, dodging trucks laden with sand, the children darted in, around, and through the rubble that was their home – is their home. They were … children, but the earthquake had left its mark on them as indelibly as it had their elders. These were children who had seen the world – once thought stable and immutable – fall down around their ears, and then woken up the next morning to live in it. In many ways, they already know life in a way that I cannot. They know it to be beautiful, vibrant, precious, but fragile. So very fragile.

Life goes on. When everything – everything – is taken away, you are forced to readjust your framework for viewing life. To say that they have lost their houses and need new ones is to skip many important steps. They need water. They need food.

One lady, bent almost double with age, stepped outside of her tent to talk to us. Five months after the earthquake, she is still eating instant noodles. The extent of the devastation is such that one must provide not only for what we would consider the most basic of needs – shelter – but must first look to the foundational elements of those needs.

I do not mean to diminish the work that has been done. Much has been accomplished. There is a makeshift water pipe bringing water down from a mountain stream. The majority of people live in government-provided tents, but peppered among these are Black Diamond and REI hiking tents that have been donated. In between the blue government tents is now a long tarp that people can use as a communal gathering ground, as well as a place to prepare food in the rain. Houses are being erected. A month and a half ago there was only rubble, but now three houses are completed and occupied. Much has been accomplished, but there is still so far to go.

As we were leaving, we passed another old lady carrying vegetables across her back. She was a classic Chinese woman – the mountain life had hardened her, and her face was deeply wrinkled by the many days out in the sun. She gave a wordless smile and grabbed my father’s arm and motioned towards me. I was holding a camera, so I thought she wanted a picture. Then she left my father and came towards me and grabbed my arm as she had my father’s. I thought she had wanted something, but the only thing she wanted was to shake our hands, to express her gratitude for what little help we brought. Then she moved on to distribute her vegetables to those in the tent city behind us. There was work to be done.

I find myself looking for a way to summarize this experience, and am at a loss for words. How can one summarize something that is yet ongoing? We left, and my father and I had dinner at Zoe’s, an American Café in Chengdu. I ordered myself a chili cheese burger, but ate it somewhat guiltily, sobered by the knowledge that that the old lady up in the mountains was probably boiling water for her instant noodles.