Adsotrans

I admire Peter Hessler’s ability to write about China without coming off as trite or condescending. He doesn’t traffic in banalities and doesn’t pass off his own experiences as anything but fragmentary and personal. It may also be that among the few China books I’ve managed to read in the past years, only Oracle Bones resonated in a way that made me feel it was trying to express a sense of loss: painting a picture of a Beijing that I know (or knew), and somehow capturing the sense of a city fleeing from its past while mired in it.

The reason I mention this is that I stumbled across a short commentary by Hessler on the Wenchuan earthquake:

In the minds of many Chinese, major earthquakes are often connected with political events. This week’s disaster is the largest since 1976, when a quake in eastern China killed more than two hundred and forty thousand people. That was the year that Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong both died, and the Cultural Revolution ended. At that time, Willy was a newborn in rural Sichuan, far from the epicenter, but even there his parents felt the tremors. His mother was bathing her two sons and her first instinct was to put some clothes on them—later, she said that she couldn’t stand the thought of them dying naked. In a neighboring village, the peasants slaughtered all the pigs, even the smallest ones; they believed that it was best to enjoy what they had before the world ended.

It’s those last two sentences that humanize it all. I was chatting with Echo a few days ago and remember being surprised how shaken up she was. Up until that point, I’d been totally oblivious to the earthquake, donating money in charity drives and reading the news online, but otherwise unaffected by the media blitz. Echo was badly affected though, and what brought it home to me was when she said:

“Beijing is technically a very dangerous place, but it’s actually quite safe because it’s 皇城”.

“皇城?”

“Yeah. Geologists say it’s dangerous, but the city has been safe for more than 800 years because it’s been the seat of the Emperor.”

Pointing out that geomantism went out with dowsing in scientific circles didn’t seem the best response, so I stayed tactfully silent. I figure if I can eventually win on the “drinking-cold-water-does-not-kill” front I’ll be happy enough. But it struck me how illogical and small our efforts are to impose order on the outside world at times of tragedy. Even when they make sense, they don’t make any sense.

At any rate, I’m moving back to Beijing quite soon and am hoping to avoid earthquakes. Will post the details on that later. Hope things are going well for all of you reading. The entire Hessler piece is online at the New Yorker if you haven’t stumbled across it elsewhere.

Tags: wenzhou