Sichuan // Current

6.1 magnitude earthquake leaves 22 dead in China

A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck China's southwestern Sichuan province Saturday, killing 22 people and injuring more than... more

goldenways
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6.1 magnitude quake kills 22 in southwest China

BEIJING (AP) -- A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck China's southwestern Sichuan province Saturday, killing 22 people and... more

ivxx
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China rocked by another earthquake

According to local state media, an earthquake measuring a possible magnitude of 6.1 has struck China's south west Sichuan... more

mattbrawn
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Chinese teacher sent to labour camp for earthquake photos

A Chinese teacher has been sent to a labour camp over his internet photographs of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan... more

goldenways
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Saving Sichuan's 'people in the clouds'

The devastating earthquake in Sichuan province has seriously endangered the 3,000 year-old customs of the Qiang people, writes the... more

mundosanto
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7 pandas remain at famed breeding center in China

BEIJING - Only seven pandas remain at China's most famous breeding center, after a final group of 13 animals were transferred from the earthquake-damaged facility, an official said Tuesday.

Most of the pandas at the Wolong Nature Reserve, tucked in the lush mountains of Sichuan province, had already been moved following the powerful May 12 quake that rattled Sichuan province and killed nearly 70,000 people.

The quake killed at least one panda and left the Wolong center vulnerable to aftershocks and landslides.

The 13 giant pandas arrived at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Base in the Sichuan province town of Ya'an on Monday night, said Li Desheng, research director at Wolong. Only seven 1-year-old cubs remained at the center.

"This is because the staff at Wolong really loves pandas, and they wanted to keep some little ones," he said in a telephone interview. "They are the hope for the future reconstruction of the panda base."

There were 63 pandas living at the Wolong center when the quake struck. The others have been moved to Bifengxia and a breeding center in the provincial capital of Chengdu. Facilities in the Chinese capital of Beijing, the eastern province of Fujian and the southern province of Guangdong are also keeping Wolong pandas.

The Wolong reserve is at the heart of China's effort to use captive breeding and artificial insemination to save the giant panda, which is revered as an unofficial national mascot. Plans for the facility's reconstruction have not been decided, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Meanwhile, an 8-year-old panda evacuated from Wolong gave birth to a set of twins on Monday at her new home in Bifengxia, state broadcaster CCTV reported. News footage showed a staffer holding a newborn panda, hairless and squirming, in an incubator.

Only about 1,600 pandas live in the wild, mostly in Sichuan. An additional 180 have been bred in captivity, many of them at Wolong, and scores have been loaned or given to zoos abroad, with the revenues helping fund conservation programs.
BEIJING - Only seven pandas remain at China's most famous breeding center, after a final group of 13 animals were transferred... more

mundosanto
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4 months ago

Million flee south Chinese floods

Flooding in southern China has killed at least 55 people and forced more than one million to flee their homes, state media report.... more

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5 months ago

A heart-breaking video about the shakiest and deadliest earthquake in the century.

Less than two weeks after the monster earthquakes hit Sichuan, China, the Western media have significantly cut back on, if not forgotten, the disaster coverage. Many have seen the horrific images of dormitory buildings shaking, people running for lives and soldiers digging rubble for signs of life. But this earthquake, along with its thousands of aftershocks, is very very different, and so much more brutal than any earthquake in recent history.

To present the disaster's visual destructiveness and ruthlessness isn't the most difficult job, as there are thousands upon thousands of video clips and images available on English and Chinese portal sites, TV network web pages, among other online entities. But how to get the viewers to understand the full magnitude of the destruction and, more importantly, the extreme challenges for refugee resettlement and reconstruction in less than 10 minutes is no easy task. (Most people nowadays don't have more than 10 minutes online for things they don't care much about any more.)

I set out to tell the earthquake story in a powerful video in a few minutes to the English speaking audience. By picking through over a thousand photos and dozens of video clips found on Chinese web sites, I managed to weave out a narrative of some major highlights with the help of a few Chinese classic tunes in the background. Strong components of this presentation includes:

The opening factoids - babies becoming orphans, parents grieving souls, 7,000 school buildings collapsed and one survey in a school found 90% students lost their friends.

Images of an anchorwoman running away from studio scared of shaking, continuous sound a minute's worth of studio desk trembling, and a clip of a security tape capturing people fleeing the building and sunshade umbrella shaking.

An emotional short conversation of an intact family describing how the father saved the daughter and what the daughter was thinking in the three hours buried under rubble. The daughter was so grateful for her survival that she kept saying "thank you" to her father, and the father kept telling her "don't mention it, stop crying." (This may not be something unusual for most Western viewers, but for those who understand Chinese culture, people often don't express emotions explicitly and saying thanks to parents or children is something rarely heard.)

Contrast photos of communities before and after the quake, photos of landslides, leveled landscapes, successful and failed rescues, satellite imagery, and a climactic string of photos that present a whole variety of difficulties for those who deal with the earthquake destruction, from 4 million Chengdu citizens sleeping on the streets to babies crying for parents.

At the end, I chose to have a moment of silence and, during this moment, open some thoughts about some of the questions journalists and many Chinese raised about shoddy buildings for schools, concerns about safety of many dams in this earthquake prone region, so on and so forth. As these will be some of the very important questions for China to address to rebuild stronger and better houses, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure projects.

This production is the most heart breaking piece I have done. But as a powerful video presentation, I hope it can help my nation and millions of those affected in their reconstructions by getting continued attention from outside China even though people here tend to forget about a most devastating earthquake in this century on the other side of the planet.Less than two weeks after the monster earthquakes hit Sichuan, China, the Western media have significantly cut back on, if not... more