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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