China bows in grief, to public demand
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - The national mourning observed this week for victims of the Sichuan
earthquake is the first public remembrance in modern China's history ordered to
commemorate ordinary people rather than political leaders.
At 2:28 on Monday afternoon, exactly a week after the quake hit the remote
hillsides of southwestern China, the country came to a standstill, mourning the
50,000 people estimated to have perished in the tragedy.
Flags flew at half-mast, air-raid sirens wailed and motorists blew their horns
in a deafening crescendo. The last time the country
observed such an official mourning ritual, silencing all music and closing all
entertainment venues was after the death of communist China's founding father,
Mao Zedong, in 1976.
If China felt divided and isolated then, mourning its dead paramount leader who
had inflicted years of famine and chaos on the nation, it seems united now in
grieving for the quake victims. In the aftermath of the quake when every day
brought news of a mounting death toll, the need for shared grief, for a shared
moment to bid farewell to the departed had grown too.
Bloggers had called for a collective expression of mourning two days after the
May 12 quake. On several websites there were calls for the national flag to be
lowered and for the Olympic torch relay to be suspended. In the face of so much
death, the ostentatious scenes of carnival-like processions accompanying the
torch's relay in China were offensive to many. "Let us show some humanity," is
how one blogger defined the public's need for solemnity.
Bowing to public calls, the government has now declared three days of official
mourning, closing cinemas and karaoke clubs, canceling entertainment shows on
TV and ordering all state newspapers to publish editions in black.
For many what is happening these days, as the leadership displays a rare
affinity to listen to what the public wants, is truly a novelty.
"They [the leaders] showed that they can hear us and take a cue," says elderly
Zhang Ruixiang as she observes her granddaughter play in the park. "For
ordinary people like us there is not much one can do but show solidarity with
the survivors and they have allowed us to do it. I feel grateful".
Inadvertently or not the government has managed to skillfully exploit the
disaster to shore up public support and burnish its reputation.
"The outside world has had a chance to see a truly admirable side of the
Chinese nation - the courage of a grand nation," is how Zhang Guoqing,
international relations scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
appraises the international reverberations to China's quake.
At home though, the test has only now begun. Even as the mourning seems to have
put pressing questions of responsibility on hold, concerns have been raised
publicly about the staggering numbers of children and youngsters that perished.
Allowing the TV to report live from the scene of the disaster and letting
voices of survivors be heard all over the country, the government has been
unable to disguise the fact that schools and hospitals were among the first
buildings that gave in to the destructive force of the quake.
In Mianyang city alone, seven schools collapsed, burying 1,700 people. Another
700 students were buried in the nearby town of Hanwang when their school
building crumbled.
Altogether, 6,898 school buildings have been destroyed by the quake, according
to Han Jin, head of the development and planning department of the Ministry of
Education. The implications of the destruction look so grave that Yunnan
province, which borders quake-hit Sichuan, has ordered the demolition of all
school buildings considered unstable.
The government has promised a full investigation once the rescue work is
completed. "If quality problems do exist in the school buildings, those found
responsible will be dealt with severely," Jiang Weixin, a top housing official
threatened at a press conference over the weekend.
Former prime minister Zhu Rongji - well-known for his acerbic language and
blunt rhetoric - once famously described buildings in the Chinese countryside
as "doufuzha" (bean curd residue) projects. He was hitting at the
well-known but never uprooted corruption where developers work hand-in-glove
with local officials to flout safety codes for their own enrichment.
While the authorities have managed to organize what President Hu Jintao called
an "all out" rescue effort, the future days present an even bigger test for the
leadership when Beijing starts to look for answers to what part of the disaster
was manmade.
For one, the extensive coverage of the earthquake has also revealed that, apart
from children and youngsters, a large number of victims were migrant laborers,
living in hamlets and shacks that caved in when the quake struck.
That element of public distress was evident from the letters received by
newspapers from readers asking the media to cover the plight of ordinary people
rather than the acts of state leaders. "At times of natural disasters the role
of national leaders is irreplaceable," said one letter sent to the Southern
Weekend, "but in the face of such great tragedy we must connect more with the
people in suffering".
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