一位亲自去了灾区的朋友写的英文文章
From Saving the Country to Saving the Life
After the Sichuan Earthquake and the Olympic Games, is China closer to returning to the Land of God?
Promise Hsu
Supper should have been the liveliest time in this courtyard.
It looks that light has already been on. It’s time for supper.
But why have parents not come back from work? Why have children not come back from school? Why has the dried bib not been brought in? Why is it that there’s no babies’ crying?
Whichever city you go in China seems to have the apartment buildings like this one. Six floors. Grey exterior. Dim stairways. Dujiangyan Hardware Corporation Apartment Compound is but a different name.
The smells of stir-fried dishes would drop by between the rooms. At least because of this, the dim stairways would not be desolate. A rich flavor of life.
But not this evening. Without the smells of stir-fried dishes, it wasn’t desolate either. With the smell of the disinfectant lotion assailing your nostrils, it was harsh and raw, many many times more desolate than desolate. It was May, the cruelest month of the year.
Light was not from the apartment building inside. That’s the bleak and barren moon reflecting the light from the fire engine outside.
Everywhere in the courtyard were bricks, concrete floor slab and metal bars. Only figures flashing on them were the evidence that it was still human’s world.
Yet, where were the people inside the building? Was there anyone left?
Except Zhang Xiaoping and his girlfriend Luo Qingfeng, I didn’t know where their neighbors had gone.
The part they were in was hit hardest by the earthquake. It has not collapsed completely yet. But the six floors have shortened to five. The stairways of the first floor were buried underground.
The couple was the reason why the rescue team came here. Chen Xingming, the cousin of Luo Qingfeng, found them still alive two days after the quake.
No one could move the concrete floor slab prevailed over them even after the rescue team arrived, even after 129 hours since they’re buried, even after Zhang Xiaoping was pulled out of the ruin alive but with his lower legs amputated.
129 hours are the time Zhang Xiaoping was trapped in the wreckage. That’s 5 days and 9 hours since the massive earthquake struck at 14:28 on May 12th 2008. That’s a record of life preservation. For Zhang Xiaoping and Luo Qingfeng, that’s the last 129 hours the couple stayed together, 129 hours without sunlight.
Now, the couple is no longer in this world. Luo Qingfeng passed away in the ruin three days after the quake. Zhang Xiaoping was rescued alive. I planned to see him at West China Hospital in Chengdu, the provincial capital of the southwest province of Sichuan. However on the morning of the 7th day after the quake, I heard the news of his death from the television screen on a taxi in Chengdu. His heart stopped beating barely two hours after he was pulled from the ruin in Dujiangyan, about 60 kilometers west of Chengdu. That’s just after midnight on May 18th when two Chengdu journalists and I were on the way back from the pitch-dark Dujiangyan to Chengdu. Afterwards, we knew just at that moment another aftershock was jolting the Chengdu Plain.
It is said that Zhang Xiaoping almost ran out of the building immediately after the quake. But Luo Qingfeng did not. As his boyfriend ran back, the concrete floor collapsed obstructing their way out.
Did they talk with each other? What did they talk about? Could they see each other’s eyes? Were they hopeless when they thought of each other at their last moment?
Though I refer to them as a boyfriend and a girlfriend, it is not as romantic as it sounds. Both were middle-aged. Zhang Xiaoping was already 46-year-old. And he was a laid-off worker. The apartment on the first floor here was Luo Qingfeng’s. Both had divorced their former spouse before they lived together less than two years ago. Only Luo Qingfeng had a child who was not with her.
Is it true that these two ordinary lives have thus ended outright? Is it sheer absurdity? What on earth were they here for? It is true that many people say they do not care about for ever and ever, so long as once had. Yet, what on earth did the couple once has? Even if there’s something they once had, is the death like this what they deserved to have?
A matter of life and death
One and a half month on since I left the Dujiangyan courtyard, sometime each day I would feel still standing among those heaps of rubble visualizing how they spent their last hours in the dark. It’s hard to imagine that scores of people of my trade coming from across China were standing at the home gate of these two strangers witnessing a 10-hour rescue effort of other scores of people mainly firefighters led by a major general of the People’s Liberation Army.
Zhang Xiaoping and Luo Qingfeng had never received such a nationwide attention the whole of their lives. But what could be brought to them with such last attention?
For those who could not enter the ruin to the rescue, what could be done to help the victims?
Prayer appears to be one of the words passed on most frequently between people in China since the quake. But to whom we pray? Who will listen to our prayers? Is it because our prayers were heard that Zhang Xiaoping could be finally pulled out of the wreckage? Is it because our prayers were not heard that his heart eventually stopped beating less than two hours later?
Many people admit that they are powerless after the quake. What could be admitted other than admitting powerless? Who could prevent death from coming when it comes? When each and every life is born, death is coming. Day by day. Minute by minute. There may have been numerous uncertainties in life. The certainty of death, though, has been without exception. What is uncertain is sooner or later.
Death looks elusive when people are preoccupied with life of the present. Such might be the case for many people of the current generation in China before the temblor rocked much of East Asia at 14:28 on the 12th of May 2008.
It only takes a few seconds for the death to preoccupy the life of anyone, whatever you do, whoever you are. All are equal before the death.
One of the most widespread impacts the Sichuan Earthquake has made on China may have been the plain fact that in a year that would mark the rise of modern China with holding the Olympic Games on the top agenda after three decades of continued economic growth so many a living creature stopped living abruptly in broad daylight across so large a land almost simultaneously, with numerous images beaming across the world by various media of in particular those artless school children and their teachers perished in the collapsed school buildings, and other ordinary Chinese like Zhang Xiaoping and Luo Qingfeng locked up in their home-turned-into-hell.
Facing the abyss that never returns, who would be unmoved?
The government responded swiftly with uncharacteristic openness with its premier arriving in Sichuan from the country’s capital of Beijing within several hours after the quake; hence the rescue and relief efforts that involve local, national and international organizations the world has witnessed since then.
It is in a stark contrast with not only China’s neighboring Myanmar in the response to the cyclone disaster in early May but also China itself in the past. In the summer of 1976 when an earthquake of similar magnitude hit the northern Chinese city of Tangshan, the same Communist government refused to accept international aid and wouldn’t send its premier to the disaster zone that’s less than 200 kilometers northeast of Beijing until six days after the quake.
30 years of reform and open-up policy which was adopted two years after the Tangshan Earthquake has been attributed to the big changes since then.
What kind of changes would happen after the Sichuan Earthquake? What kind of changes would take place in the next 30 years?
The clue to the answer may have something to do with the theme of both earthquakes. It is a matter of life and death.
While making the second visit to the Sichuan disaster zone in late May, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, wrote down a phrase on a blackboard at a makeshift middle school. Literally, it reads, “Much distress regenerates a country”.
So far, it has generated somewhat heated online debates about the meaning and even the relevance of the phrase.
For generations of Chinese elite in living memory, how to regenerate China against the backdrop of the rise of the West and its dominance of world affairs has been a recurrent theme. A current that moves below the surface is that of how to pursue life over death out of fear that China, long self-viewed as the middle of the land under heaven, might be eliminated through world competitions.
In the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake, both the current and the undercurrent have been evident.
Saving the life was atop the agenda throughout days and nights immediately after the quake. Numerous rescuers from home and abroad working around the clock to free people trapped in the wreckage such as the ones in the Dujiangyan courtyard may have been the most unforgettable images besides the victims themselves.
And the three days of national mourning for the tens of thousands of quake deaths set up by the government when the Olympic torch relay was suspended along with other public amusement is another sign showing the Chinese elite have probably begun thinking seriously about the role of saving the life in saving the country.
A bruised reed he will not break
But how to save the life? Does it just mean stop someone from dying physically?
For those who live on after the Sichuan Earthquake, the question of life and death is a matter of pressing concern. Though it’s not Auschwitz, the Sichuan Earthquake is tragic enough to press the survivors to address the Adorno-style question: Can one live after the Sichuan Earthquake?
For one thing, attention has been focused on the shoddiness of school and ordinary residential buildings. As some parents sobbed out with the pictures of their children who had died in the collapsed schoolhouses, the cause of the deaths is more of man-made calamity than of natural disaster. So, the premier demand upon all the construction industry and the relevant government departments is that these man-made calamities not happen again. In short, it is a matter of conscience.
For another, attention has also been drawn to the deeper meaning of life and death. In much of Chinese history, the question of death more or less remains a taboo. Confucius, arguably the most influential thinker in Chinese history, was quoted by his students in the Lunyu or Analects as saying, “While you do not know life, how can you know about death?” The view, fairly typical of Chinese elite of many generations, may sound reasonable in normal times. When it comes to catastrophe of various kinds, though, more convincingly relevant arguments are much-needed. In the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake, how to articulate the meaning of life and death seems to constitute a critical part of bringing the real comfort to survivors.
Standing before the twisted buildings that trapped Zhang Xiaoping and Luo Qingfeng, I found two “I”s, or two Zhang Xiaopings, two Luo Qingfengs.
One is the mortal I. However I pray, I would receive no response awaiting the death that puts an end to me. What a grief. Despair.
I tried to imagine that I was trapped like Zhang Xiaoping in the building before my eyes with the loved one just at my side but unable to rescue her from the wreckage. In the end, though, I still couldn’t imagine how dark would be the dark around him.
What I could imagine is that both the sun and the stars would be the same with their light going out of its way to the earth. By crawling along the surface of this Sichuan building regularly, it informs people outside the building when the night goes and when the day comes. I was once one of the people outside. Yet now, how many times brighter would be the night outside than the day here?
But faintly, I found it was not the whole of me. I might have underestimated my life.
When thinking of the loved one just at my side, when the endless night has become the daily life, when the metal bars and concrete floors have been part of the furniture,
when the floor slabs over the legs have grown eternal, when the tears have dried up,
when the dust has settled, my eyes may be the clear creeks. And my heart may be the quiet Don River.
I might have underestimated my life indeed. The 129 hours of life record Zhang Xiaoping had set was broken a number of times in the days that followed by people who were freed from the wreckage. They later spoke about how they had cherished the hope that they would be freed and how they had quenched their thirst by drinking their own urine.
I still might have underestimated my life indeed. Are the lives of those who’re not freed from the ruin definitely not saved?
What on earth happened at the last moment? Who knows except I who would go?
Man is not the creator of his own. Man doesn’t know when he is to be born. How could he know when he is to go?
Perhaps it is not an end. Don’t people refer to death as just leaving this world or simply passing away? If so, death is a new beginning. If it is a new beginning, it is not an end to everything. If it is not an end to everything, it is not an end at all.
Perhaps all this is but an imagination. But, is imagination itself not a miracle? Is there anyone who could say where imagination is in the world? Is it the invisible out of the visible body? Does the invisible not exist?
Imagination is by no means the only invisible that exists. In this huge disaster relief endeavor, love is probably the only really effective power that is believed could relieve quake victims.
We have witnessed numerous actions of love. And yet, can we tell the whereabouts of love?
Quite a number of survivors have expressed a kind of faith by saying, “I definitely believed I could be freed. I definitely believed I could be saved.”
How could they say they “definitely believed” they would be saved before they were saved?
“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Someone who lived more than one thousand years ago explained why one could have such definite faith. Is it still faith if one has already seen or been saved?
And didn’t many people recently say that they believe their loved ones who had perished in the disaster were on the way to Heaven?
They haven’t seen Heaven but believe in Heaven feeling that would be the best place for people to go.
Why is it the case? What brought them to believe in Heaven despite the country they live in rarely attaches importance to the knowledge about Heaven?
What if Heaven has told them the truth?
I believe in Heaven, too, not because I just believe so but because I believe someone who’s in charge of everything including Heaven of course has told us the truth by giving us his promise. It’s just in that book explaining the meaning of faith that God the Creator who’s also called Love has given us his promise.
“A bruised reed he will not break,
And a smoldering wick he will not snuff,
till he leads justice to victory.
In his name the nations will put their hope.”
As the amputated Zhang Xiaoping was carried through a narrow tunnel dug by the rescuers out of the ugliest building I’ve ever seen, a big round of applause was given to him and his rescuers. As I later heard the news of his death, my heart ached. Yet I still believe the promise God in Heaven has made to his children will not fail.
In ancient times, China was once called the Land of God, a name that has been long taken for granted. Will China return to God’s land again?
It may be uncertain whether much distress can regenerate a country. But as the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake shows, saving the life will surely help save the country. By whom the life can be saved? The country that can host the Olympics? Or someone else? Someone above? Someone within? Until it hears the promise and depends on it, China still has a long way to go.
“Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”
For as Zechariah, an ancient Israeli prophet, writes in the same book, “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me, and I will return to you.’ ”
Promise Hsu is a founding senior editor of Fortune Times, a Chinese international weekly offering clear and in-depth reporting, commentary and analysis on world politics, business, idea, science and technology. He helped launch the Asian Business Leaders monthly and CCTV-9, China's first 24-hour global news channel. He is the author of "God and the Essence of Liberty: A Preliminary Inquiry into the History of Freedom," a paper presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago. He is also the Chinese translator of John W. Danford's Roots of Freedom and Orlando Patterson's Freedom in the Making of Western Culture.