Word: chengdu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...convoy of 18 SUVs pulls to a halt on the narrow road above Sanjiang, Wenchuan county, Sichuan, the gleeful shrieks of an excited crowd float upwards through the autumnal mist. The vehicles have made the three-hour journey from the provincial capital Chengdu, spending two hours of it crawling through countryside affected by the cataclysmic earthquake in May. We say countryside - in fact, the view through the windows is an unsettling inversion of what the term normally evokes. Giant fissures sunder the hills and there are yawning voids where roads should be. Broad swaths of boulders and debris remain...
...local policeman begins to yell at the top of his voice at a knot of uncomprehending Italian journalists. Li's and Versace's entourages make time-out gestures at each other, cutting the visit short and bundling everyone into the SUVs for the long drive back to Chengdu airport and the evening flight to Beijing. It has been an exhausting business, spending a day in Li's wake. "Oh this is nothing," laughs his personal videographer. "You should have seen the crowds when we were in Shanghai...
...freedom. Their growing feeling of empowerment is contagious. Last year's protests by thousands of citizens in the coastal city of Xiamen against plans to build a billion-dollar chemical factory ultimately forced the cancellation of the project - and sparked subsequent copycat demonstrations over proposed megaprojects in Shanghai and Chengdu. "The pressure is building in the pressure cooker and there's no current avenue for it to be released," says Nicholas Bequelin, China researcher for New York City - based Human Rights Watch. Bequelin believes there may be "many calls both inside and outside the Party to put some sort...
...contagious process. Last year's protests by thousands of citizens in the coastal city of Xiamen against plans to build a billion-dollar chemical factory ultimately forced the cancellation of the project. And the protests directly sparked copycat demonstrations against planned mega-projects in Shanghai as well as Chengdu in Sichuan province, which occurred just a few days before the earthquake devastated the region in May. "Chinese are trying to get government off their backs," says Bequelin. "This has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the Communist Party or debates about political systems...
...This small, impoverished town 37 miles (60 km) north of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has become the focal point of anguish over what Chinese now call "tofu schools," nearly 7,000 schoolhouses that collapsed in the quake while other buildings around them remained standing. The government says that nearly 300 children were killed in the Juyuan Middle School alone, and the anger of the parents of the victims is not diminishing, even though this past week the government reiterated its promises to investigate what happened and to include parents on a panel that will oversee the inquiry. Parents...