According to our investigation over recent months, one-third of the reinforcing steel used in this project so far was purchased by 9th Metallurgical from Jintang (金堂), Guanghan (广汉) and other small steel works, and substandard steel materials such as the “inferior steel” (地调钢) that is expressly forbidden by the state are being used [in the project]. This reinforcing steel product does not carry a steel manufacturing number from the producer, and what’s more it has not product quality certification (产品合格证), and all of it was brought on to the construction site at Wanda Plaza in the middle of the night.

The Mianyang Wanda Plaza project is massive, with a construction area of 450,000 square meters. There are a total of seven processing areas for reinforcing steel, and each of these has massive quantities of poor-quality steel. According to our careful estimates made through undercover work, we found that this steel falls below national quality standards — for example 10mm steel reinforcements, which are nationally limited to no less than 9.6mm, are only 8mm at this project site (please see the photographs following this letter).

The final picture shows local offices of the main contractor on the project. A banner features the slogan, “China State Construction Engineering Corp: Quality is Weightier than Mount Tai”.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, construction, investigative journalism, Sichuan, steel
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They came from four directions, and departed in eight directions. We feel regret mingled with self-reproach. They should have had better deaths, with calm and unhurried remembrances, tears permitted to fly like the rain. In such haste, such haste, they departed forever from villages and cities left in sick-heartedness. Now, across mountain slopes where new green rises over the stones, they remain in the schools, on the roads, underground, in the nameless places. They are together with each other, the way wheat grows together. In the summer, in the midst of their final twilight, they went to a place we cannot see. They are the only anguish and the only comfort left to the survivors [NOTE: comfort by virtue of their continued presence in spirit].

In our hearts, we lowered our flags to half-mast for them. On the day of mourning we called them home and wished them peace. We gathered together all the human evidence of them we could. We read their names together [NOTE: This seems to be a reference to Ai Weiwei's piece "Missing," in which volunteers read the names of students who died in the Sichuan earthquake]. We promised that we would bear them constantly in mind, never forgetting, over and over again. We did so much, and yet we did too little. Those of you who were lost and did not return, where are you? Can the light we kindle shine across your path? We cannot do more. We can but present steel zodiacs, and offer up porcelain sunflower seeds [NOTE: This is a presumable reference to Ai Weiwei's exhibit at the Tate Modern, which incorporates sunflowers seeds and the Chinese zodiac], symbolic memorials to your lives once so tangible. What else would you wish us to do? [NOTE: Many would read the above passage as a reference to the collapse of school buildings and the work done by Ai Weiwei (艾未未), Tan Zuoren (谭作人) and others to remember the children who died in the quake and understand the underlying causes.]

We know these deaths have already happened, but to forget is to heartlessly hope they endure a second death. If we do not cherish their memory, oblivion [or forgetting] will only grow in strength. The sacrifices of this day are done to spurn forgetting, to avoid losing them all over again. Our future memorials are proof again and again before them: we will never be far from you, we will always be together, even though we meet with death and fear. This is a promise that we must bear firmly in mind. People are eternal, and they are always with us. As citizens of conscience, this is our duty to these [destroyed] villages and cities.

Update: China Media Project reports that the article is back up:

A daring editorial on commemorating the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which disappeared yesterday from the website of Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily, has been re-posted at the paper’s site today. The decision to re-post the piece is a puzzling one, given that sources say the editorial has resulted in intense pressure on those responsible.

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Art can be dangerous. Very often artistic fame has proved dangerous to artists themselves. Mr. Ai’s work is not polemical — it tends towards the mysterious. But his immense prominence as an artist (he was a design consultant on the “bird’s nest” stadium for the Beijing Olympics and was recently ranked No. 13 in Art Review magazine’s list of the 100 most powerful figures in art) has allowed him to take up human rights cases and to draw attention to China’s often inadequate responses to disasters (like the plight of the child victims of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province or those afflicted by deadly apartment fires in Shanghai last November). The authorities have embarrassed and harassed him before, but now they have gone on a dangerous new offensive ….

The lives of artists are more fragile than their creations. The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus to a little hell-hole on the Black Sea called Tomis, but his poetry has outlasted the Roman Empire. Osip Mandelstam died in a Stalinist work camp, but his poetry has outlived the Soviet Union. Federico García Lorca was killed by the thugs of Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, but his poetry has survived that tyrannical regime.

We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei detention 2011, art, artists, Liao Yiwu, new york times
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Changsha-based Sany Group Co. says its 62-meter truck-mounted concrete pump, used to build some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, is on its way to Fukushima at the request of Tokyo Electric Co., or Tepco. The plan, according a statement posted on Sany’s website, is to use the machine to pump water toward Tepco’s reactor No. 4.

Already well known in the construction industry, Sany is making a name for itself in disaster relief as well – partly with its own stream of press releases.

A huge crane Sany built was instrumental in the rescue of Chilean miners last year. The Chinese company also claims a role in rescuing Colombians trapped in mud). On the domestic front, the company sent a team to the site of Sichuan’s 2008 earthquake to help clear roads and extract survivors from the rubble.

Sany says the truck sent to Japan, originally ordered by a Saudi client and worth roughly $1 million, is being sent free of charge to the nuclear plant and was requested personally by Tepco President Masataka Shimizu. “Since the break out of Japan’s nuclear crises in Fukushima nuclear power station, the determination and the strong will of Japanese people have touched the whole world,” the Sany statement said.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, construction, Japan earthquake 2011, mining accidents
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China began cleaning up on Friday after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit the far southwestern province of Yunnan near the border with Burma, killing at least 25 people and injuring at least 250 others.

About 127,000 people were evacuated from the immediate area after 18,000 homes were destroyed and 50,000 others damaged, state media reported ….

Two four-story buildings, one containing a supermarket, collapsed on to their lower floors, crushing a number of people in the county seat of Yingjiang, near the epicentre.

Some experts expressed concern that so many structures had crumbled in the temblor, which most buildings should have been able to withstand had they been constructed according to the country’s building codes.

If building codes had been followed “or if they had made any conscious effort at all to strengthen the houses, then the houses should not have just collapsed like that,” Wang Yayong, a chief engineering adviser at the Chinese Academy of Building Research in Beijing, told the Associated Press.

Xinhua, on the other hand, focuses on rescue efforts:

Many soldiers used their hands to dig through the rubble as machines could not be operated there.

More than 6,100 people, including soldiers, police officers, medical staff, and civilians, have participated in the rescue operation, saving at least 40 trapped people and sending more than 200 injured people to hospital.

The county needs 5,000 more tents for the homeless, said Zhao Jin, Party chief of Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture of Dehong, which administers Yingjiang.

Zhao said he had asked the provincial government for help.

The provincial and local governments have earmarked 23 million yuan (3.49 million U.S. dollars) in emergency aid to the quake-hit regions.

“We are now short of disinfectant, crucial for the post-quake epidemic prevention work,” said Zhang Tao, president of the People’s Hospital of Yingjiang.

As with the recent evacuation of Chinese citizens from Libya, and in addition to the obvious humanitarian concerns, authorities will be keen to mount a visibly effective response to demonstrate their ability to look after the people. As Austin Ramzy wrote in Time after last year’s Qinghai quake:

In the past, the government’s first response would more likely have been to downplay the extent of the disaster, as it initially did with the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed 242,000, or more recently during the 2003 SARS outbreak. But in recent years, Beijing has emphasized a robust and more open approach to disaster management. “Crisis response has entered the set of things expected from government,” says Björn Conrad, a researcher with the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute. “That’s what you have to do to maintain legitimacy.”

Large-scale relief efforts are more eye-catching than the unglamorous enforcement of building regulations. Nevertheless, the extent to which Japan’s painstakingly earthquake-hardened buildings and infrastructure managed to withstand a quake more than 22 times stronger than the one in Sichuan has not gone unnoticed.

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China’s government, often at odds with Tokyo, offered support to Japan after Friday’s powerful earthquake, with Premier Wen Jiabao expressing “deep sympathy and solicitude to the Japanese government and the people” and telling his counterpart, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, that China is willing to offer whatever aid is necessary.

Chen Jianmin, director of the China Earthquake Administration, said its International Rescue Team has put its members, equipment, materials and medicines in place and ready to depart for Japan, after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the Japanese coast, triggering a major tsunami and leaving dozens dead and displaced tens of thousands of people. “We are highly concerned about the earthquake in Japan and its consequences such as fires and building damages,” the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Chen as saying ….

An earthquake has been an occasion for China and Japan to set aside their differences before. After the 2008 earthquake that crippled China’s southwestern Sichuan Province and killed at least 68,000 people, Japan’s Self Defense Forces–as the country’s military is known–was the first foreign aid and rescue team allowed into China. Japanese corporations donated to aid efforts as well. Appliance-maker Panasonic, for example, contributed more than 10 million yuan to relief efforts in the aftermath of Sichuan quake, Xinhua reported at the time.

Among chinaSMACK’s collection of translated Weibo posts is a second-hand account of the Japanese response in 2008:

自然免疫:

@ PhoenixTV’s chief reporter Li Miao in Japan: During the Wenchuan Earthwuake [Sichuan Earthquake], many Japanese ordinary common people organized donations on the streets, while restaurants, 24-hour convenience stories, and many other places all had donation boxes. Japanese rescue teams deployed at the earliest time possible (waiting for the “yes” from the Chinese side), waiting an entire night for orders at Narita Airport; Apart from the government, various political parties also did what they could, the Liberal Democratic Party chartered planes to deliver supplies to Chengdu, and as the only Chinese journalist in the same industry, I can confirm this.

While some “netizen reactions”, inevitably, have been gleeful—there are examples on chinaSMACK for those with strong stomachs—celebration has been by no means the universal mood. At Foreign Policy, Adam Minter describes another current that he saw gradually emerging online:

In part, it’s a reaction against the nakedly inappropriate nationalism that marked some of the earliest reactions to the tragedy; but buried in that nationalist critique is an unflattering national critique as well. Take, for example, a message that was lifted to Weibo’s front page late in the day (similar to Twitter’s front page of popular tweets), that read, in part: “How many Japanese would write, ‘Congratulations on the Wenchuan earthquake?’” It’s an uncomfortable question that was, in a sense, revised and extended onto Twitter by a Chinese user who, tacitly invoking the crumbled buildings in the aftermath of the Wenchuan quake, pointed out, late in the day: “The casualties from an 8.9 event in China would be hundreds of times higher than in Japan.” That kind of comment, most likely, wouldn’t last long on China-based Sina Weibo, which is heavily “managed.” Indeed, as some began to point out on local and international microblogging platforms late in the day, natural disasters — whether in China or elsewhere — are politically sensitive events from the perspective of the leadership. This one, like Wenchuan, is increasingly becoming so.

Meanwhile, back at Starbucks, two young Chinese women in their twenties, one with iPhone, and the other gadget-less, overhearing my English-language conversation, brashly reached out to me. “We Chinese people feel very badly for Japan,” one said, while declining to give me her name. “We know that Japan cared very much for China after our earthquake. So we will want to help them.” When I asked if either one would consider donating to the Red Cross, just as Chinese had done in droves after the Wenchuan quake, they looked at each other, then back at me. “Why not?,” answered the one who already done all of the talking. “China is becoming a great nation these days. We should.”

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“During the Richter magnitude 8 Wenchuan earthquake of 12 May 2008, 1803 concrete and embankment dams and reservoirs and 403 hydropower plants were damaged. Likewise, during the 27 February 2010 Maule earthquake in Chile of Richter magnitude 8.8, several dams were damaged. However, no large dams failed due to either of these two very large earthquakes … It is very difficult to predict what can happen during such a rare event as very few earthquakes of this size have actually affected dams. Therefore it is important to refer to the few such observations that are available. The main lessons learnt from the large Wenchuan and Chile earthquakes will have an impact on the seismic safety assessment of existing dams and the design of new dams in the future …  At this time we are still in a learning phase as very few large modern dams have been exposed to strong earthquakes.”

The report highlights still greater uncertainty over the earthquake resistance of older dams. With the sophistication of dam design and construction advancing rapidly in recent decades, those built as recently as the late 1980s are now considered obsolete. This is particularly relevant to China, where over twenty thousand large dams (higher than 15 meters) were built in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The authors also examine the issue of “reservoir-triggered seismicity”, inconclusively implicated in the Wenchuan earthquake. Here, the focus is on the possible effects of RTS on dams themselves: modern dams should not self-destruct by triggering seismic activity severe enough to destroy them. However, other structures nearby may be more vulnerable, while landslides set off by RTS could significantly magnify the potential damage.

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Chapter Two: Ms. Li of Tongkou

All around the countryside of Beichuan County, there are signs of massive reconstruction. People are busy: building their own houses, working as hired hands in neighbors’ half finished new homes, refurnishing or earning some extra cash in road construction. Sights on the road are telling of the magnitude of the work being done here: motorways rebuilt, dams repaired, the electric grid being reinstalled, schools and hospitals and government offices – usually the first to be reconstructed and the most ostentatious – and homes, everywhere, solid and spacious by rural standards.

In the little township of Chunshui (??), a weekly market is in full swing, offering, apart from the usual selection of vegetables, geese and chickens, piles of cheap household necessities. At the edge of town temporary houses still stand, now deserted and partly covered with an overgrowth of weeds, as former residents are moving into new permanent homes. The work is not yet done: The road from Anchang (??) is still barely passable and at the new school electricians and craftsmen work feverishly to prepare everything in time for the start of the school year in September. The overall atmosphere is that of optimism and hope for a fresh start. Onward along the road, everywhere villages are seen, all with newly constructed two story houses surrounded by corn and rice fields at the edge of forested green hills. Only here and there the road shows signs of the terrible upheaval in boulders thrown at the edge of the Jin river, or a bare mountainside where rolling earth and crushing rocks buried a whole village once, not three years ago.
Reconstruction in Tongkou

Up the road on the way to the ruined city of Beichuan, now a memorial site, lies the small one street townlet of Tongkou?????, the smallest and poorest of the towns in Beichuan country – really little more than a village in the shadow of a local holy Daoist mountain. Here, too, people are at work: Some houses along the only street are already occupied while other families are still hard at work on their new homes. One of them is Li Dafen, 54, violently mixing cement for plastering on recently erected walls. She is among the last households in the village to be moving in, living in the meantime in the dark and exposed basement of her uncompleted apartment.

Born in an even smaller and very remote village in the Beichuan area, Li attended only two years of elementary school. She came to Tongkou as a young bride to live in her husband’s house more than 30 years ago and had her two children here.
Li Dafen in her home

Even before the quake tore down her home, Li was no stranger to calamity. Her daughter died some eight years ago from internal bleeding early in her pregnancy. Less than two years later, her husband died suddenly of heart failure. (A new hospital was built in town with donations from Shandong province, and seems to be quite active though not as well equipped as propaganda would have us believe. It might help make tragedies like Li’s less common in the future).

She was left to support her remaining son by herself, which she did by going to “da gong” – getting odd jobs in a series of eastern cities. News of the earthquake caught her cleaning hotel rooms in Nanjing, and she rushed home only to find it gone, utterly destroyed following the quake and floods from a “quake lake”. Fortunately her son, now twenty, was in a nearby town at the time and was not hurt. He now lives with her in the basement when not looking for a job in town. Late last year, Li went east once more, to Beijing, again working to earn money for the renovation: She says she got 29,000 RMB in compensation, to which the government added the laying of foundations for all the new houses in Tongkou – now built according to a master plan and supposedly quake resistant. Walls, ceiling, roof, flooring, plumbing and installation of doors and windows are left for everyone to do according to their own design and means. Li’s means are meager, but she nevertheless has grand plans for the place:

“People are nice enough here but they don’t help each other much. They all have their own worries and cares. People suggested that I’ll leave, with my husband no longer around and my son not wanting to live in such a small place. My family in the village suggested that I’ll move in with them, or that I’ll go east for good, but I want to rebuild my home. This is all I had left after their deaths and this I want back. This is my home – If I leave I’ll never have another one.”

And so she stays, and is quite optimistic that her home will be finished in two months or so. “You have to come here again next year and see the house,” she says. She might not be here next year though: after building and furnishing the house, the modest compensation fund will be all but spent. She then plans to go “da gong” again.

See more of Rachel’s photos from Tongkou.

*Rachel’s self-introduction:

I came to China for three months, with a plan to see a bit of Tibet and Sichuan and to get a taste of rural life in this country before I settled down back home with a job at a law firm. Nearly eight years later, I am still in China, and still as fascinated with its rural areas.

After working as a correspondent in Beijing for two years, in July 2010 I have embarked on what I hope will be a six month journey through the Chinese countryside — listening, watching and telling stories from farmers’ lives. Much has been and is still being written about the “Chinese miracle” (or dystopia, depends on your point of view) and this will only be my added two cents. China, it is often said, has more than 400 million Internet users and hundreds of millions of new urban residents, who are changing the face of the country. It is less often noted that China also has another billion people who have not yet been fully included in these new economic and social changes. The following, if you will, are some fragments from the story of the other billion.

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Introduction from Rachel:

I came to China for three months, with a plan to see a bit of Tibet and Sichuan and to get a taste of rural life in this country before I settled down back home with a job at a law firm. Nearly eight years later, I am still in China, and still as fascinated with its rural areas.

After working as a correspondent in Beijing for two years, in July 2010 I have embarked on what I hope will be a six month journey through the Chinese countryside — listening, watching and telling stories from farmers’ lives. Much has been and is still being written about the “Chinese miracle” (or dystopia, depends on your point of view) and this will only be my added two cents. China, it is often said, has more than 400 million Internet users and hundreds of millions of new urban residents, who are changing the face of the country. It is less often noted that China also has another billion people who have not yet been fully included in these new economic and social changes. The following, if you will, are some fragments from the story of the other billion.

Chapter One: Master Plan: Survivors of the Beichuan Earthquake Get New Homes – or Not (Part 1)

In his village of Yuchuanshan (???), Mr. Du is leisurely sipping tea on the porch of his new house, watching his grandchildren play among fruit trees.
Mr. Du and his granddaughter, enjoying their new home after months in a tent.

The scene hasn’t always been that ideal: The family of seven has only recently moved into this spacious new home after living in a tent in their own front yard for more than a year following the collapse of their old home in the 2008 earthquake. But all is well now, Du declares. The compensation he got for his lost home, about 16,000 RMB, wasn’t really enough, considering that expenses and the cost of living are going up quickly in the recovered area. Still, getting to spend the evening of his life in peace and serenity on his own land is something one like Mr. Du surely appreciates. He is full of praise for his neighbors, his sons and especially the volunteers from around China and the world who came to help Beichuan in its dire times. All is well now.

Some 25 kilometers away, however, all is not well. The town of Leigu (???), only about 8 kilometers from Beichuan city, was one of the hardest hit, the whole town virtually flattened, and survivors from the population of 18,000 (including the population of some 30 attached villages), are all left homeless. Where the town once stood there is now a refugee camp: rows upon rows of “disaster relief houses.” The thin walled structures have served the people well, but they are meant to be temporary and two years of use are apparent. The houses are rundown but in Leigu, most are still occupied, with thousands still waiting for a more permanent solution. All around, construction of farm houses, apartment buildings and public facilities such as schools and hospitals is in motion.

Wei Yonghong, a farmer from near Leigu is one of those in waiting. Her 10-month-old daughter, like many other children, was born in a makeshift hospital in the camp. Her older son started his schooling in a UNICEF supported school there last year. When disaster fell, Wei was out, working her fields. Her in-laws managed to get the boy out of a collapsing house, but she took almost 24 hours to find that out, all the while trying to make her way home among shattered buildings and rubble. She now prepares for what could be a third winter in the camp if she’s not relocated soon. The family still hasn’t been notified when they will get a new house. “We want to go back to the village to rebuild our house ourselves, but the government said no, there is a master-plan so we have to wait for them to approve construction. We still don’t know when that will be. We’ve been waiting a long time without anyone telling us anything. Will you write about it”?
The son of Wei Yonghong inside their temporary house in Leigu, Beichuan.

With many complaints of belated compensation and being ignored by authorities, Wei still counts herself among the lucky ones: Homeless, jobless, facing an uncertain future and forever haunted by distressful memories, she nevertheless has her family still whole and mostly unharmed. Her neighbors from both sides, as well as her cousin, all lost children in the earthquake.

At another row of shabby temporary houses, Jiang Qinyong tells a similar story: Her village, too, is not yet approved for reconstruction (it was located at the site of the camp itself). Watching over her daughter and several other children, Jiang, whose husband was badly injured and spent months in a hospital in Chengdu, is in a good mood, like her neighbors, who all try to keep themselves busy in the routine of transitory existence. Old women busy themselves keeping tiny plots of arable land, thus helping to feed their families. “Before, we used to grow much of our food ourselves, but now we need to buy everything in the market, and prices are rising all the time,” Jiang complains. She says the hardest aspect of camp life is personal hygiene. Showers and toilets are provided, but are crowded in the evening and uncomfortable for families with small kids.

It is hardest, maybe, for the old and the disabled, of which Li Yinjin is one. The blind woman, aged 70, was alone in her home when the earthquake hit. Feeling her way out she was then found and brought to safety by a neighbor. She too is still waiting to receive compensation and a relocation plan, living in the meantime in a 14 square meter room together with her son and two orphaned grandsons. The son’s wife died in Beichuan town, he himself having returned home from Jiangsu province, where he was working in construction. Like many of the men and some of the women, he now tries to get employed within the region: Opportunities seem abundant with so much construction going on, but somehow many still complain they have a hard time finding a steady job or sufficient income.

The clearest distinction seems to be between those still waiting, like Jiang, Wei and Li, and those like Du who already have a home, or even those with only a clear relocation schedule. The latter, feeling the worst is now behind them, are in high spirits, making many plans and frequenting the many furniture shops that have sprung up at the edge of the camp. Warm invitations are repeatedly being extended: “Come visit again this winter. By then, we could drink tea in our new home.” By then, Wei Yonghong’s baby girl will be taking her first steps, most likely on a grassy path between trailer-houses.

All photos are by Rachel:
A sign at the border of Beichuan country. Beichuan does thank, repeatedly and with loud praise, all those who came to the county’s aid.

New government building in Tongku Town. Always the most flashy. This is China, for better or worse

Road reconstruction

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, China coverage, other billion, rural areas, urban rural divide
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An ambitious, emotionally charged, occasionally melodramatic tale, “Aftershock” spans two of China’s most famous earthquakes: the Tangshan quake that killed 250,000 people in 1976 and the Sichuan quake that killed 87,000 in 2008.

Mr. Feng’s real-life wife, Xu Fan, plays Li Yuanni, who in the aftermath of the Tangshan earthquake is faced with a parent’s nightmare decision: Rescuers tell her they can save only one of her 7-year-old twins, both buried in the rubble. Hysterical with grief, she chooses her son, Fang Da, who is rescued, though he loses an arm. The daughter, Fang Deng (Zhang Zifeng), is recovered later, and pronounced dead; the frantic and despondent mother puts her beside the corpse of her husband, then carries their son to find medical help. But the little girl is actually still alive, and when she’s found later by a childless couple—army doctors—they assume she’s an earthquake orphan, adopt her and take her away. Decades pass, another earthquake strikes, and brother (now a successful businessman, played by Li Chen) and sister (a doctor, played by Zhang Jingchu) both head for Sichuan as volunteers. And then…

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, cinema, Feng Xiaogang, Tangshan earthquake
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