Word: wenchuan
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...seen. The landscape they are leaving behind is hellish, she says: rows of wrecked houses, collapsed schools and putrefying bodies lining the road. But the news doesn't faze the two friends who have trekked there by train, car and now, finally, on foot to help victims of the Wenchuan earthquake. Dressed in white T shirts reading "I [heart] China," the men are determined to reach the core of the devastation. "After we saw the news of the disaster, we decided we had to help," says Wu Guanglei, a 36-year-old high school physics teacher from Zigong, a town...
...first time, for example, and many said they were eager to do more community work in the future. Says Jiang: "It's a major leap forward in the formation of China's civil society, which is vital for China's future democratization process." That doesn't mean the Wenchuan earthquake will lead to elections in the next few years, but the complex and shifting relationship between the Communist Party and increasingly vociferous citizens could evolve into some form of compromise between absolute autocratic control and Western-style democracy...
...Nation's Agony If the crisis had a defining moment, it came on May 19 at 2:28 p.m., exactly a week after the Wenchuan quake, named for the county at the epicenter. That was when the entire country paused for three minutes to remember the dead. Traffic came to a halt, flags were lowered to half staff and Chinese everywhere stood in oft tearful silence. Drivers honked car horns and factories blared their sirens in mass keening. The ritual marked the start of three days of national mourning during which Internet activities such as online gaming were halted...
...most of China's long history, earthquakes and other calamities have been viewed as both portents of change and a test of the ruling government's "mandate of heaven." Many Chinese point out that Mao Zedong died only months after the Tangshan disaster. The Wenchuan quake is being discussed in similar terms in Chinese Internet forums, restaurants and tea shops, often generating an inchoate anxiety about possible cataclysms to come or punishment for past wrongs. Some commentators find significance in the fact that the quake hit just where the vast Sichuan plain meets the foothills of the Himalayas, the geographical...
While authorities were able to respond quickly to Dujiangyan, damage to roads kept rescuers out of some towns in the mountains for days. Soldiers finally reached the epicenter of Wenchuan county Wednesday. The initial reports from Wenchuan county were that the damage was severe. In the town of Yingxiu, only 2,300 out of a population of 10,000 survived, the state-run Xinhua said. Helicopters that had been prevented from flying to the area because of heavy rains were finally able to deliver supplies. Premier Wen Jiabao, who flew in with the troops, told residents, "The central government...