The Wenchuan Earthquake Memoirs
It was like the end of the world…
“Everything was shaking, and the sky was dark gray. I felt totally terrified, and I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, the door burst open and someone rushed in shouting, ‘There is an earthquake!’” said Zichun.
On May 12th, 2008, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake occurred in southwest China. The epicenter was in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province. It was the deadliest earthquake in China since the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake. Zichun Xie is someone who experienced that disaster first-hand. As a nine-year-old girl, she faced this ruthless and cruel earthquake alone, and it was extremely difficult for her to find a safe place. On March 8th, 2019, over 10 years later in New York City, I interviewed her as she revisited her memories of this disaster.
Figure 1 Map showing the distribution of felt ground motions associated with the Wenchuan Earthquake.
The Start of a Nightmare…
“I remember that I just woke up and was sitting on my bed when the earthquake happened,” said Zichun. At the time, she was in fourth grade and lived on her school’s campus. Her elementary school was in Shifang City and her home was in Mianzhu City; both are near Wenchuan County.
She described when the event began: “The earthquake happened at 2:28 pm. I felt there was a strong wind blowing outside. It blew away many clothes hanging on the roof. I also felt and heard something was falling on the ground.” She illustrated how their dorm keeper rushed in and shouted to Zichun and her roommates that there was an earthquake, and everybody must go outside immediately. Without time to think, she and her roommates started to run.
“At that time, I had no idea what an earthquake was, and I didn’t know how dangerous and powerful it was,” said Zichun. When she heard the tone and saw the expression of the dorm keeper, she realized the earthquake was an unusual disaster and realized “it was an emergency.”
Moved to a shelter…
All the students and teachers gathered on the school playground after the earthquake and luckily, nobody in her school was hurt. The buildings were thankfully not crushed or damaged in that earthquake. However, there was still a possibility of aftershocks, and so it was not safe to return to the dorms. The president of her school allowed the students who lived in nearby Shifang City to go back home. The school offered accommodation to the students whose homes were far from the city while they contacted their parents. Zichun was one of those students, and she stayed in a temporary tent on the school playground for nearly three days.
Figure 2 In this May 17, 2008 file photo, a rescuer pulls out a body from the rubble of a collapsed building, five days after the quake in Yinghua town of southwest China’s Sichuan province. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty/FILE)
She recalled her memory of those three days, how she deeply missed her mother and father. “I remember that it kept raining after the earthquake. It was dark outside, and I heard that many people died and lost their homes.”
Temporary loss of contact…
Due to the poor network signal, Zichun only got in touch with her mother once despite their dialing each other many times. A lot of roads between Shifang City and Mianzhu City were damaged by the earthquake making it so Zichun could not reunite with her family immediately. To make matters worse, Zichun’s mother could not find a car to bring her daughter back home. Alongside those concerns, Zichun worried about her father’s safety. Her father worked in a phosphate mine factory on a mountain, which is extremely dangerous because of the possibility of landslides that can cover and destroy such mountain mines. She could not do anything but wait, and despite being anxious, Zichun said she was not afraid.
A wandering journey…
Because it was not safe to let a little girl continue living in a small tent on the playground, Zichun’s teacher brought Zichun to her own home. She delivered her back safely when Zichun’s mother arrived in Shifang City. Zichun’s mother thanked her teacher and told Zichun that her father was safe. Her mother also mentioned that the biggest bookshelf fell down in their home, and it was no longer safe to stay there. After they returned to Mianzhu City, Zichun’s family moved to a woven bag factory in a small town. When they arrived, she found many people, including her father’s coworkers, living there. Her family lived there for nearly three months.
After the earthquake, disease became a major concern. One day, Zichun’s parents heard that some people were getting sick near the factory. They were not sure whether the rumor was true or not. Because the sanitary conditions of the factory were bad, her parents worried about her safety. They asked one of their friends to bring her to a safer place, Suining City, which was not affected as much by the earthquake. Zichun’s family was yet again separated by the earthquake for nearly two months. Finally, Zichun was sent back to her parents when living conditions had improved.
Effects and Rebirth
According to official statistics, more than 69,197 people died, 374,176 more injured, and 18,222 missing in the Wenchuan Earthquake. The disaster affected at least 45 million people in total, including those who escaped from their homes (Li 29).
As one of the people affected by the earthquake, Zichun was forced to move to several different places. When she came back to school and met her friends and teachers again, she felt so sad about what she heard. She described the moment she learned one of her classmate’s mothers passed away in that earthquake. Some of her teachers’ relatives lost their lives as well.
“It was terrible,” she said in a low voice.
Furthermore, the Chinese college entrance examination (usually beginning on June 7th) was postponed nearly one month to July for the students who were affected by the earthquake in Sichuan and Gansu Province. Thankfully, they had more time to prepare for the exam and adjust themselves. The statistics show that a total of 119,928 affected high school students took this exam from July 3rd to 5th in 2008 (Dai 1).
Despite the fact that the Wenchuan Earthquake hurt thousands of people’s hearts and took away precious lives, the citizens did not give up. Instead, they gathered together and built a new Sichuan.
Figure 3 People gather for a candlelight vigil for Sichuan Earthquake victims Tuesday, May 12, 2009, in Shanghai, China. Survivors of the past year’s devastating earthquake in China’s Sichuan province trekked into the ruined town of Beichuan Tuesday for the first anniversary commemorations of the tragedy that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing and 5 million homeless. (AP Photo)
Epilogue
At the end of the interview, I asked Zichun how she felt about the reconstructed cities in Sichuan Province.
“It has been 10 years since the earthquake happened. The cities were constructed much better than before, and now it is hard for me to find any trace of the earthquake. Every year, people honor the victims of the earthquake on the May 12th Memorial Day. What’s more, people know the preciousness of life and have more confidence about the future.”
By Chong Zhang
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Illustrations done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Maya Hilbert for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/