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Jonathan Ansfield
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Jun 29, 2008 05:42 AM
Last week I was in Sichuan, where post-quake reconstruction is just beginning but the sense
of utter ruin has faded fast.
The down-and-out, albeit, are a relatively small and hard-to-reach
minority: I met an ER nurse who couldn't forgive herself for not having
saving a soul, for instance, and an eight-year-old boy who'd barely
spoken since seeing his teacher consumed in the debris. But the civic
spirit I saw in action disinfected some of the cynicism I carried going
in. This was particularly the case at the displacement camps I visited,
where the mood blended forbearance, levity and melancholy. Imagine an
encampment of Deadheads on tour - without the Dead.
The quake leveled not only towns and villages but momentarily, the
class consciousness of an increasingly stratified society. It's been
many a decade since so many people in China found themselves lumped
together in such sorry straits, and perhaps never before have so many
across the country genuinely banded together to provide a safety net.
Perversely put, Sichuanese can take solace in living out the
socialistic ideal of the People's Republic. Not that the damage was
egalitarian or equitable. The Big One mostly hit the ill-prepared
underclasses up in the mountains, much as Katrina submerged their
American counterparts below sea-level. But I'd take life in a Sichuan
displacement camp over a FEMA trailer park any day. Here, at least, it
signified development.
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 27, 2008 06:40 PM
Everyone's been struck by the continuing altruism and idealism of young Chinese who flocked to quake-devastated Sichuan province to help, any which way they can. For some Americans the scene evokes almost a kind of latter-day Chinese Woodstock. Jennifer...
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Manuela Zoninsein
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Jun 26, 2008 12:18 PM
Two of Beijing’s three free English-language entertainment and listings monthlies have just suffered setbacks, and it is unclear when or if they'll return to newsstands. Time Out Beijing (TOB) has been shelved indefinitely due to “improper licensing."...
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Jonathan Ansfield
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Jun 25, 2008 06:37 PM
Chinese typically root on heroes and peers alike with the cheer jia you! , the rough equivalent of “Come on!” or “Let’s go!”. In the lead-up to the Olympics, with national pride under assault from all sorts of natural calamity and human rights kerfuffle,...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 20, 2008 09:14 PM
Chinese Netizens are buzzing about a cheeky interpretation of the five Olympic mascots, known as fuwa. "Five Fuwa, Five Disasters" is the title of one Web commentary making the rounds. The story goes like this: the five mascots are animals or symbols...
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Karen Springen
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Jun 18, 2008 07:04 PM
During the Olympics media summit in Chicago in mid-April, Newsweek's Karen
Springen talked with U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson, 16, about her Olympics
aspirations and her emphasis on having "a normal life" -- including going to the prom.
Excerpts:
Shawn Johnson suggested she was an accidental Olympian. "I never
started gymnastics thinking I wanted
to be an Olympian," she says.
"It was just always something I enjoyed."
At age 3,
she started tumbling. "My parents put me in gymnastics
because I had way too
much energy
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Jonathan Ansfield
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Jun 15, 2008 08:40 PM
When a snow disaster cracks the land, When Tibet splittists disrupt the torch relay, When an earthquake shakes every single person’s soul... No matter what hardships hit, [We’ll] never leave any countryman stranded. Go China! Stand up straight! Inspiring...
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Manuela Zoninsein
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Jun 12, 2008 05:23 PM
After spending eight days in quarantine, eight visiting pandas from the Wolong Panda Reserve in Sichuan Province were presented to the public at Beijing Zoo last Saturday, June 7. Though their tenure had been planned for months in advance of the Beijing...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 10, 2008 05:58 PM
In China as elsewhere, a grassroots movement hasn't arrived until it can claim a t-shirt or two. The explosion of volunteerism and pride after the tragic Sichuan earthquake has triggered a wave of t-shirts. Jennifer Conrad, who works in Beijing, explains:...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 6, 2008 05:03 PM
Ma Jian, one of the most influential modern Chinese writers, has published a new novel that starts with the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989. After beginning his career as a photojournalist in the 1970s, Ma quit that job, t ravelled...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 5, 2008 09:47 AM
With nearly 18,000 earthquake victims still missing, China's
police have mobilized an unprecedented forensic identification campaign
to help survivors learn the fate of missing relatives. The Ministry of
Public Security in Beijing organized crime scene investigators, police
photographers and other forensic experts into 22 teams that fanned out
across the quake zone. Their mission: to process unidentified corpses
and establish a DNA database that relatives can consult in the months,
or years, to come.
The scale of the task is huge. "We need more technicians and more
chemicals used in DNA analysis. That's our biggest difficulty right
now," says Wang Qinghong, vice director of the Sichuan province public
security
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 4, 2008 11:14 PM
Hong Kong is the one Chinese city where the Tiananmen crackdown can be mourned publicly on its anniversary. (I know some residents don't like to see Hong Kong described as a "Chinese city", but I also think they're a few years too late in their objections.)...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 3, 2008 05:07 PM
Some readers said they experienced difficulty trying to access an article my colleague Mary and I wrote about the "Tiananmen Effect." This is the 19th anniversary of the crackdown. I'm pasting the article here: The Tiananmen Effect The Sichuan quake has...
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Melinda Liu
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Jun 2, 2008 06:42 PM
As the Olympic torch wound its way through China on the domestic legs of its relay, one of the 21,880 torchbearers who carried it was Italian journalist Francesco Liello of the Milan newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport . A veteran sports journalist who's...
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Quindlen Krovatin
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Jun 1, 2008 06:46 PM
Sunday, May 25 was a rare day in Beijing -- sunny, warm, clear, beautiful -- and its clarity brought home the enormity of the Sichuan quake. Out at 3 Shadows Photography Art Center, the grass was emerald green, the sky was sapphire blue, and an eclectic...
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