When I set off to cover the Sichuan earthquake last May, I did not know my life and the lives of the families of quake victims would acquire a strange symmetry: of lost hopes, and the struggle to find a space to mourn.
Three days after the quake struck, I found a group of migrant workers in the Beijing West railway station. They carried all they had — bedrolls, thermos flasks, plastic basins, cooking oil — to travel a distance equivalent to that between California and Minnesota, on badly damaged roads and rails.
More of China’s migrant laborers come from Sichuan than any other province. Until the quake, Sichuan was best known for its spicy food and poverty. China’s migrants are a largely ignored army, building skyscrapers and raising other people’s children. In the aftermath of the quake, they were trying to rush home to their own.
I had come to the railway station hoping to join a group on their journey. What I didn’t know then, was I was in the early stages of a pregnancy.
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