by Admin
Earthquake
Diary (6)
The
Reflection
19 February 2009
This
is the most amazing eyewitness account of a huge event.
Through his camera lens, the author known as 新洋, recorded and
reported, and is still recording and reporting to this
very day, the horrific catastrophe and incredible human response. The
following are the images edited from some of his photos
and English translation of the related notes:
1, Eyewitness Report through the Lens
2, The Rescue Efforts
3, The Tentative Recovery
4. The Support
5, The Chinese Army
新洋 29 May
2008
Two weeks after the massive
earthquake, essential services have been resumed in most
quake disaster areas, with a certain degree of twist, of
course.
Postal services are
delivered on carts.
Local government offices
set up in tents.
Clinics run by military
forces.
But at least, the quake victims
have enough food during the day and warm bed
covers at night.
By now, the survivors have a
chance to sit and view the changed landscape,
reflecting on what occurred two weeks ago.
That mount wasn't there before the
quake - the locals told me - in the location
there used to be a river up to 100m deep. It is
the power of the earthquake that tossed the
entire hillock, along with the plantations grown
on it, into the waterway.
An elderly woman directs my sight
to the scene from a distance. "See that?
That day I returned home from the farm. When I
went over the hill I saw my home just right over
there. Then in a split second, my village
vanished without a trace, and from the deep
within the mountain a reddish coloured monster
jumped out, looming large in the air up to dozens
metres tall."
Some better informed youths
further explain to me that after a big bang, the mountain exploded, emitting lava that was
hot like burning fire. A gigantic crack appeared
in the earth, and some villages tragically
plunged into the rift.
"I saw some people running
out of the houses on the bank towards the river
and fell into the gap straightway," one
youth recalled, "then followed another
muffled sound, the crack in the earth disappeared
as if nothing had ever happened."
Under this new thick mount is an
entire village buried deep.
Under this new waterway there are
many villages submerged in the bottom of the
river.
新洋
1 June 2008
This little boy quietly approached
me and signalled me to follow him to a riverbank.
"My mom has been buried underneath over
there," he tells me, pointing at a hill on
the other side of the waterway. "My grandpa
said no one can ever get her out, not in 1,000
years."
His name is Han Mingli (韩明李). His father died before he was
born, his sister buried under the rubble of a
collapsed school building. And he is cared for by
his aging grandpa and his grandma who is very
ill.
His voice is coarse, and his
expression beyond grievance. Like most kids grown
up in mountain villages, he's strong and
independent, but he also longings for his mom's
love, terribly, since he is only a 9-year old
little boy.
7, The Hope
8, The United Efforts
(Original post in
Chinese can be viewed at
forum.xinhuanet.com/detail.jsp?id=54276745&pg=10)
Prev: Earthquake
Diary (5)
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Chinese
Character as Crop Circle
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