On 30th April 2009, two SQR volunteers and a professional surveyor went up to the Guangji Kindergarten and the topographical survey is now complete.
The next stage is to get architectural plans drawn up, whilst finding builders and project management professionals.
GuangJi Kindergarten
The Guangji Preschool & Kindergarten was founded in 2000 by school principal Kang Yuling and several other teachers. The school is now the only preschool and kindergarten serving five villages. After the closure of other schools, to ensure the continuing education of the youngest members of her community, Kang Yuling rallied her fellow teachers, and then donated her family home and farmland to the cause. The group raised enough money to build a basic two-storey structure, and a small play area alongside her family home.
The new structure became classrooms, while the older structures housed teachers’ quarters, kitchen, and offices.
The May earthquake destroyed Kang’s house, and the former family home is badly damaged, and needs to be demolished. The new structure needs reinforcement if it is to be declared safe.
See photos of the school (in temporary prefabricated buildings) from January 2009.
Sichuan Quake Relief is working with the school principal, parents and teachers, on a project to rebuild the kindergarten.
Feature: Restless recovery on post-quake Sichuan
www.chinaview.cn 
2009-04-12 13:35:26
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/12/content_11172347.htm
By Gong Yidong, China Features
BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) — Liu Daihe, 43, lights a cigarette passed by his cousin Liu Daishu and spreads the mahjong tiles over the table. Puffing smoke into the 20-square-meter temporary house, he settles down to idle away another day with friends and relatives.
It is a typical snapshot on the 11,000-household interim community to the north of Mianzhu, one of the most damaged cities of the May 12 earthquake that left more than 80,000 Chinese dead or missing. Liu and the 40,000 inhabitants are enveloped in an atmosphere of both hope and ennui that contrasts with a clearly felt grief eight months ago.
Demands of life
Before the catastrophe, Liu was a phosphorous miner for many years at Qingping town of Mianzhu. But the mine, one of the local pillar industries, was swallowed by the quake along with Liu’s job.
As the breadwinner of the family, Liu looked for jobs elsewhere, but was turned down because of his age. “I’m not competitive on the market. More importantly, I don’t have technical skills, except from doing hard labor in the pit.”
The assistance is also dwindling. Last year, the government handed out 200 yuan per person a month for eight months and 33.5 kilograms of grain per head for three months, but all the financial and material support ended in January, says Liu. “Nowadays, around 15 percent of the people in the community live on what they had before,” his cousin says.
The price of commodities has climbed due to rising transport costs, and Liu and his wife, Chen Mingfang, have to rack their brains to make ends meet.
What worries the couple most is their 14-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, who are studying at secondary school.
Changying, the daughter, will take the national college entrance examination this summer, meaning a lot of money will be needed if she is enrolled into university. This term alone, she paid 2,000-plus yuan for tuition fees and living expenses.
Her brother, Chenglin, pays 9 yuan a day for three meals in the school canteen as part of a boarder scheme.
Liu’s mother-in-law, who lives under the same roof, is covered by neither a pension nor the rural cooperative medical care. Liu is relieved that the past winter was mild compared with the previous year.
“Otherwise, she might have caught a severe cold,” he says.
In the end, Liu was forced to accept employment in a private mine hundreds of miles away in Yibin, southern Sichuan, where he was paid 80 yuan a day to work from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m..
The pay was satisfactory, but the toil and loneliness in a strange city were intolerable. The man of few words killed time by playing mahjong with his colleagues, and sometimes, small-time gambling.
Unlike many parts of Sichuan where the natural conditions are harsh, Mianzhu has fewer people moving to big cities like Beijing or Guangzhou for job opportunities.
“Before the quake, Mianzhu was blessed with favorable conditions, with no storms or landslides, and most of us preferred to stay in our hometown,” says Liu Daishu.
Adding to their sense of security was the multitude of industries sprawling across the city, such as the national key companies Dongfang Turbine, Lonmon Chemicals and Jiannanchun Distillery, which absorbed a large number of local workers.” We are used to the pace of ease here,” says Daishu.
Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Resources and Social Security of Mianzhu confirm that around 20,000 people are working outside Sichuan Province, accounting less than one tenth the total labor force.
Before the Spring Festival, Liu returned and worked at another small mine in the adjacent city of Shifang, which was set up by one of his fellow villagers.
The following is a second journal entry from Becky Priebe, who, as Becky Hoops took part in the recent ‘Clown Trauma Tour.’
See also Part 1 for a report on Clowns Sans Frontieres’ tour of Sichuan.
China Earthquake Tour, Part 2
The second half of our tour took place in a city called Mianzhu. This city, 2 hours north of Chengdu, was gravely affected by the earthquake. At first glance we immediately saw small signs of damage: cracked buildilngs, random piles of bricks, almost empty river beds (dams that controlled the rivers had burst during the earthquake), but the most obvious sign was the thousands of rows of temporary housing and temporary schools, on the outskirts of the city.
This “temporary” city, made of white and blue metal, consisted of corrugated retangle row housing, forming a completely new city… like a refuge camp within the country’s own borders. Conditions are basic: electricity, no heating, no running water and no windows. There are more than a million people currently living in these conditions. They are no longer receiving governement aid and most are separated from their family networks. In China, family, community and work networks are very important, many earthquake victims are left without this support system.Most of the shows we did in Mianzhu were in one of the temporary schools. There were about 10 000 children attending this school, so we did multiple shows at the same school for a few days. The children were between the ages of 5 and 16, and shows were for between 400 and 1200 kids at a time. By the end of the week we were had apparently earned a somewhat disconcerning rockstar status…. for those who are curious: yes, 1000 Chinese teenagers who all want an autograph at the same time, is a bit intimidating.
In Mianzhu we also did shows for a retirement home and in the temporary housing project for those who happened to be there. The elderly reacted just as strongly as the children, with a bit less pushing for autographs at the end. One man began yelling, or what I perceived at yelling, at me before we started a show. I was intimated and thought that he didn’t want us there, he seemed agressive and upset. Upon receiving traslation, we realized that he was expressing his apologies that we should see such an ugly part of the country and that he was happy we had come. After he saw me two-person-hula-hooping with a stern, young police officer he was even more happy we had come.
The day that hit me the hardest was when we visited the city of rubble where all of the displaced people had lived, worked and attended school. For the first time since we had arrived in China, it was quiet. There were no people in streets selling fruit, cheap clothing and plastic toys, no herds of school children, there were no traffic jams or honking horns. But within the disturbing silence, if you listened carefully, you could still hear the millions of people screaming as their homes and schools collapsed upon them. Among the rubble we saw toys, stuffed animals, baby shoes; unsettling reminders of children crying and whimpering under mountains of rubble, wondering if they would be rescued in time. Or relatives, crying out to loved ones for days and weeks, with the chances of their survival dwindling with each hour. This day hit me hard. It made me realise in a very tangible way what these “refugees”, we have been performing for, had been through. It fed me with a heightened desire to make the children laugh, to bring joy and smiles to the people. My ridiculous complaints about the food and cold weather began to seem insignificant and frivolous compared with the grim realities these displaced people had lived through and are continuing to face.
One collapsed school we visited was reduced to rubble in seconds, killing 3000 students instantly. Some parents lost their only child; with the “One Child Policy” in China, families are legally restricted from having more than one child; couples are sometimes sterilized after their first child is born.
The government is not really giving much money or aid to these temporary cities. Maybe I don’t understand the issue in its entirety, but I am still somewhat enraged when I think back to the massive expenditures of the recent Olympics in Beijing. There is also a theory that the numerous dams built in the area contributed to weakening the fault line. There are so many issues like these that seem to become increasingly complex upon deeper research and investigation. It is really touchy for any Chinese people to say negative things about the government; even when we had translaters it was difficult to know how people really felt.
The last show we did was in a school for children that had lived in the hardest hit city of WenChuan. These kids were, for some reason or another displaced over 6 hours from their families to live in a vacant factory. The kids were mostly teenagers of minority background. They loved the show and we even won over the slightly reluctant principal. This show, and one other show we did during this tour, was in collaboration with an organization called “Sichuan Earthquake Relief”. This non-governmental oganisation (NGO) has done and is still doing some really phenomenal work in the quake stricken communities accross the province. For more information on this NGO please visit:
http://www.sichuan-quake-relief.org/
For those who are interested in statistics of the aftermath of the quake (as of June 2008, stats obtained from Sim’s Cozy Guesthouse):
69 197 deaths
374, 176 people were injured
12, 222 missing
7, 789,100 houses were totally collapsed
24, 590,000 houses were damaged
15, 147,400 survivors had been transferred (mostly to temporary housing units, I described earlier)
Up to 46 million people were estimated to have been affected.
See first part of Becky’s report here, and her website, for more.
The following is a journal entry from Becky Priebe, who, as Becky Hoops took part in the recent ‘Clown Trauma Tour.’
See also this blog entry for a report on Clowns Sans Frontieres’ tour of Sichuan.
Clown Trauma Tour, Part 1
Chengdu, Sichuan, China,
I am going to start with my impressions of the city. These are coming from a very honest, western point of view and I’m sure my impressions would alter and soften, if I were to spend more time here and have a better understanding of the language and culture. But for right now… I think that this is a city that needs clowns and it needs color, vibrancy… it also needs fresh air, clear skies, clean water, more living space, indoor heaters, insulation…. but the latter problems, that most major Chinese cities are grappling with, have no short term solutions. It took me the first couple of days here to accept the fact that buildings here, even schools, hospitals and circus schools, have no heating…. I am slowly getting over the constant chill, but still find myself daydreaming of warmth. It is amazing what human beings can adapt to, and if the 12 million inhabitants of this city can function in this brain-numbing chill… surely so can I. The excessively spicy food and my even more excessive green tea drinking are helping. I do have to say that the Chinese are among the hardiest, resourceful, determined people I have ever seen.
Performances: Our 4 person show including: David Fiset, Becky Priebe (Canada) , David Bernbaum (USA) & Pipat Suwapat (Thailand) is comprised of contact juggling, juggling, hula hoops, clowning and duo acro. We are also blessed to have David Bernbaum here as he speaks Chinese and is our link to verbal communication with the children.
Each show we have done and will do are drastically different from one site to the next. This keeps us on our toes and very sensitive and attentive to the needs and limits of each school, hospital or orphanage. The first show we performed was about 1.5 hours outside of Chengdu in one of the hardest hit areas of the earthquake at the Xinxing Compulsory School in Pengzhou. The school was quite literally reduced to rubble and the kids now attend classes in temporary blue, corrugated metal boxes. There were about 700 children waiting for our performance when we pulled up. The were really excited to see foreigners in their remote village and just our presence caused a fury. We performed outdoors with huge piles of mangled school desks and tables for a backdrop. The children loved the show, proving once again that laughter can transverse cultural and language barriers. During this hour of our performance we hope that the kids forgot for an instant the trauma that they have lived through, the hardship they will inevitably have to endure and that the smiles will stay with them, spreading to their families and villages. For me… I forgot, for that hour, that I was freezing and upon greater reflection … I am beginning to realize the reasons we have come so far.
The next day of performances included a hospital and an orphanage. Although it was not heated, the hospital was an impressively clean and modern building. We perform for about 120 handicapped children. The children really enjoyed the show and we were happy to perform indoors with a real sound system. Following the hospital we pulled up to an orphanage where about 150 kids were waiting for us. They were between the ages of about 2 to 17. Most of the children’s parents were dead (in a country with a one child policy… most families do their absolute best to look after their only child… the children of the orphanage were therefore for the most part parentless…. they are also ironically among the rare children in China to live a “sibling experience”). The kids were tough and weren’t afraid to yell and attempt to steal our material. In the end they enjoyed the show and were very quick learners in the workshop afterwards.
Tomorrow we are off to Mianzhu, north of Chengdu, a more remote, mountain city. I will send a new update when we return.“
Location: Bookworm, Chengdu 9pm to midnight or later.
Buy an EP or Premium Charity Package
Listen to Dave and Abigail’s interview on NPR’s All Things Considered
Party! Abigail and Co. will play track from the album they have been recording for the past month, details of which follow.
Cost: only what you spend at the bar!
Abigail Washburn & The Shanghai Restoration Project Honour One Year Anniversary Of The Sichuan Earthquakes By Melding Post-Earthquake Soundscapes With the Voices Of Relocated School Children and Their Faraway Families For Benefit Album ‘Afterquake’.
National Multi-Media Museum Exhibition Planned For 2009 & 2010
Digital & Limited Edition EP CD Available May 12th
Portion Of All Proceeds to benefit Sichuan Quake Relief
In honour of the one-year anniversary of the Sichuan Earthquakes, two pioneers in entirely different genres – folk and electronica – have merged to increase knowledge and understanding of the continuing aftermath of the earthquake. More than 88,000 have died, with upwards of 5 million left homeless or relocated. A portion of the proceeds from this EP will benefit the Sichuan Quake Relief organization. Afterquake is a collection of raw, remixed field recordings of post- earthquake soundscapes as well as performances by relocated children and their faraway parents captured and produced by Abigail Washburn and Shanghai Restoration Project creator Dave Liang, in cooperation with Sichuan Quake Relief. Currently in the Chinese countryside, they will complete the entire record start to finish in two weeks’ time.
The collaboration was inspired in 2008, through Abigail’s volunteer work for Sichuan Quake Relief where she performed in ‘relocation schools’ with kids from pre-school to high school – most of whom were relocated from mountain villages to schools in new locations far from their families. “The children and teachers expressed intense grief at the loss of home and family,” says Washburn, a former Sichuan resident featured in Newsweek for her “weirdly wonderful” blend of Chinese culture and American-roots music. “I wanted to return and record their stories and songs in their own voices.”
A kindred spirit was found in collaborator Dave Liang, whose Shanghai Restoration Project combines the sounds of traditional Chinese music and old 1930s Shanghai jazz bands with the Western sounds of electronica. His project has been featured on NPR, KCRW, KEXP and the Beijing Olympics. Soundscaping the aftermath of a devastating earthquake the expectation would be music with a heavy heart, but the sounds of the children are uplifting and inspiring. A relocated boy is featured singing a ballad about missing his mom over the sounds of his parents rebuilding their house with rubble from the old one, and a 7th grade girl performs a Qiang minority song inciting everyone to dance.
Tibetan sisters recite the bedtime mantra their mom would sing to them over local samples of Sichuan Opera percussion. Playground sounds – ping pong, basketball, jax, handclapping games – are set to hip hop grooves, and the earthquake sounds are emulated by the students intense hums, looped into beat.
Afterquake will be available May 12th as a digital EP and limited edition CD, exactly one-year to the day of the earthquakes.
shanghairestorationproject.com // abigailwashburn.com // afterquakemusic.com
Sunday 8th March 2009
Approximately 20 Chengdu Sports Aid volunteers and the Jerry Snell circus took a bus to Luo Shui via PengZhou. About 50 kids were waiting for the group, and they got involved in sports coaching and activities, including skipping, basketball, badminton, soccer/football, and touch rugby.
There followed a fabulous performance from the Jerry Snell crew. David Fiset, the bespectacled clown, drew in the whole crowd with sensational stage craft, with suitcase-based antics, threatening to kiss the audience, balancing a mop, a chair and a bicycle on his chin. Pipat Suwapa was up next, mesmerising the crowd with his glass ball manipulation/juggling and comic moments, and Becky Hoops (Becky Priebe) followed up with dozens of hula hoops on the go simultaneously, massive hula hoops, and acrobatics verging on contortion. Her tantalisingly frilly pair of bloomers were a big hit with the clown, who joined in the act, jumping in and out of moving hula hoops, standing on Becky’s shoulders and on her front as she held a bridge, all this with hula hoops and juggling going on. David Bernbaum dazzled with his witty MCing, juggling, hula-hoop handling, magic, and handstands, and after some club-juggling and firestick juggling, the finale combined the talents of all 4 performers, overseen by Jerry Snell himself.
The crowd absolutely loved the show and screamed for more. The post-finale was the golden moment of the day, as a little girl helped the clown pick up his juggling clubs. As she handed him one, he had no choice but to drop one to make room for the proffered club. The helpful assistant would hand the ‘next’ one to the clown, who again had to make room by dropping another. After about 7 exchanges, the little girl got fed up, picked up a club, and marched it into the performers’ dressing room, with the contrite clown in tow, and the crowd applauding.
The day finished with a penalty shoot-out competition, with the winner presented with a Glasgow Rangers football kit by die-hard fan Andy McAuley.
The day was a great deal of fun, and was a chance for SQR to check out the sports surface they helped fund at the school. The sandy/soily surface is fine for all the sports played on this day, and Chengdu Sports Aid aims to make regular trips to provide sports coaching and activities.
Many thanks to all at the school for welcoming us and to all at SQR for organising the trip, and for EtonHouse for providing the bus.
The performers were in Sichuan as part of Circus Action International, and Clowns Without Borders TRAUMA RELIEF TOUR 2009
PHOTOS: to see all the photos from the day, click here.
Duo Hoops (Becky Priebe and David Fiset) perform at the Spectacle benefice de Clowns Sans Frontieres on 20th Nov 2008
Sign up for Chengdu Sports Aid via Facebook.
March 9, 2009
Chinese Official Defends Construction of Schools Felled in Quake
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG — A vice governor of the Chinese province hardest hit by the earthquake last May said Sunday that many schools collapsed then because of the strength of the 7.9 magnitude quake, and not because of shoddy construction.
Wei Hong, one of the eight vice governors of Sichuan Province, also declined to release the number of schoolchildren who were killed, saying that the exact tally still had not been calculated almost 10 months later, news agencies reported from Beijing. Mr. Wei spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress there.
State news media have reported that the quake left more than 80,000 dead and thousands more missing. The most controversial aspect of the quake has been the damage to 14,000 classrooms, half of which collapsed entirely.
Heavy damage to schools, some of which fell down in neighborhoods where other structures remained standing, has prompted accusations from local residents that the schools suffered from what many Chinese have termed “tofu” construction.
Epicentre location as shown in NY Times
Local and provincial officials have responded angrily to criticisms of school construction practices, and particularly to suggestions from some parents that there might have been corruption involved in the construction process for schools. The local authorities have silenced many parents who lost children in the earthquake, through a combination of compensation payments and intimidation.
A mother whose 11-year-old daughter died in the earthquake said by telephone on Sunday that “of course it was tofu construction that led to the collapse of the school.”
The mother, who requested anonymity because of continued government efforts to discourage public discussion of the collapse of the schools, said that she believed that the government must have a tally of schoolchildren who died in the earthquake, since communities in her area were well aware of death tolls at their local schools.
Mr. Wei was promoted to vice governor on June 1, less than three weeks after the quake on May 12, part of a series of shifts in provincial leaders that followed the quake but that may have been scheduled to some extent before the natural disaster.
The Beijing authorities sent their own committee of experts to Sichuan Province after the earthquake to assess construction practices there.
The chairman of the committee, Ma Zongjin, said at a news conference in Beijing last September that because of a rush to build schools during China’s economic boom in recent years, more than 1,000 damaged schools had suffered from at least one of two shortcomings: they were built extremely close to the fault line and were destroyed with other structures near them, or they were poorly built.
But detailed results of that investigation have not been released.
Student toll still under calculation ten months after earthquake
2009-03-08 10:28:12
Wei Hong, deputy governor of Sichuan, speaks at a press conference March 8, 2009. (www.china.org.cn)
Special Report: Reconstruction After Earthquake
BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) – The number of students killed in the devastating May 12 earthquake in southwestern China last year is still under calculation, an official said.
“We will publicize the result after we finish the calculation,”said Wei Hong, deputy governor of Sichuan, who is attending the annual session of the Chinese legislature.
The student toll is a question relating to the number of people killed in the quake, Wei said, adding that the calculation must be carried out according to relevant regulations enacted by relevant ministries and government departments.
“Therefore it is a very complicated process. We are still investigating into and checking the number of the dead and missing. It is not easy for us to tell how many students were exactly killed in the earthquake before the accurate number of al lthe victims is confirmed,” he said at a press conference.
Earlier reports said that thousands of students had been killed in the magnitude 8.0 quake and officials were believed to bear some responsibility in relation to shoddy construction of school buildings.
After the earthquake, the government had pledged greater efforts to investigate why many schools crumbled while nearby buildings stayed erect.
It is estimated that about 87,000 people died in the earthquake.
Wei said that the province will have restored 95 percent of the collapsed school buildings by the end of 2009. Half of the campuses are now under construction in the 39 most severely-hit counties.
The province has stepped up the re-building of residential houses for farmers and citizens. “We will ensure everybody to move into new houses by the end of this year,” he said.
He added that there have been no outbursts of epidemics nor famine in the quake region. “As no social unrest was reported, we did not take any special security measures,” he said
Click here for SQR Flickr photo map
On 3rd March 2009, SQR volunteers visited a temporary school at Emei Shan, to which about 700 students and their teachers have been relocated.
The industrial buildings are being converted to cope with housing an educational institution. SQR spoke with school management about possibilities of cooperation, and provision of extra-curricular activities.
Click here for more SQR photos
SQR visit to Emei Shan school on 3rd March 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sichuanquakerelief/sets/72157614758611855/
汉旺修建5.12大地震遇难者陵墓 清明前完工
[Approx. English translation by SQR]
Qinglong Mausoleum
A memorial to the victims of Wenchuan earthquake is being built at Qinglong village, Hanwang.
Hanwang is one of the cities worst hit by the earthquake,and according to official figures, the death doll is nearly 5000, because many victims were buried by landslides from Tuan huibao mountain.
“The memorial cost more than 1,000,000 RMB. It commenced on 1st February, and the memorial is oval in shape, and is 75 metres long by 42.50 metres wide. The cemetery road is 10 metres wide. There is a parking lot and resting pavilion on each side of the street, and this project should be finished by Tomb-sweeping Day,” said Chen banghai, the head of this project.
为铭记5.12这段巨大的灾难史，纪念在地震中遇难的同胞，也为了方便生者缅怀，汉旺镇在当初集中掩埋遇难者遗体的汉旺青龙村山头，正加紧修建5.12大地震遇难者陵墓。
汉旺是地震中受灾最严重的一个工业重镇，根据官方公布的数字，汉旺镇地震中的遇难者数近5000人，这些遇难者很大一部分被集体掩埋在汉旺镇青龙村一个叫团灰包的山头，5.12大地震遇难者陵墓就修建在这里。
陵墓工程由东汽集团投资，当地政府承建。据工程施工负责人陈邦海介绍，5.12大地震陵墓2月1日正式动工，陵墓设计总体成椭圆形，总长75米，宽42.50米，墓地道路宽10米,两边设有停车场和休息亭，预计投资100万左右。清明节前主体工程即可完工，接纳祭拜者。
Qinglong Mausoleum under construction
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