I spoke earlier about how open the Chinese government has been in allowing full reporting, both inside and outside China, in regard to the Sichuan quake and its aftermath. Old habits die hard, apparently. It has been quietly declared that there will be no more stories (at least inside China, at least for now) about the fact that so many school fells and so many government buildings didn't, or about the immense amount of donated aid that is vanishing into thin air long before reaching the victims. (For example.) But the edicts don't seem to have the force they once did. Too many people are too angry. What happens next isn't clear yet: maybe the hammer will fall hard and things will go back to how they were; maybe the hammer will fall hard and break; maybe a new compromise will be reached before the hammer falls.
In other news, I've never done it myself, but I've often thought that "News Crawl" would be a good fiction workshop exercise. You watch any major television news program, see, but instead of watching the images and listening to the anchors and reporters, you only read the headlines crawling across the bottom of the screen, and you have to write a story linking the first, say, five items into a single narrative.
Last night, though, this would have been a stretch. My mouth just kept dropping further and further open at each successive item:
A 747 carrying U.S. diplomatic baggage breaks in half on take-off...
and a cast member from the Harry Potter series was stabbed to death in a bar fight...
All of which was just a little too cosmically incongruent for me, so I stopped watching. I'm guessing that the fifth item would have been in regard to Virginia Quarterly Review and Zyzzyva beating the hell out of each other as re: slushpile etiquette. And I'm guessing that right now some hack at Fox is pitching his superiors on his great new idea: When Lit Mags Attack.
May 26, 2008, 8:44 a.m.Categories: China, History, Litmags, Politics
You've all seen the news. Yesterday afternoon, I had a slight sense of nausea, my vision was off, and I knew the feeling but it took me a few seconds to name the cause. The feeling lasted only a few seconds longer. I walked out into our living room, saw a wall-hung mirror rocking slightly, showing different bits of the room to me, back and forth. That was all that happened here in Beijing while in Sichuan thousands were dying.
The numbers are awful, and are about to get much worse.
The government here is reacting quickly and thoroughly, limiting the suffering to whatever extent they can. They are also reacting openly for once, which may seem a small thing given the horrific context, but isn't to those of us who call China home.
There are many ways you can help. Here are a few. Please give if you can.
May 13, 2008, 10:48 a.m.Category: China
