Thoughts on the Sichuan earthquake

We've been devastated by the earthquake in Sichuan Province. I heard about it on my way into work and called Lingling, who was about to leave for work herself. I listen to NPR every morning and evening during my commute and was amazed to learn that Melissa Block and Robert Siegel, two of the three hosts of the evening news program, All Things Considered, were in Chengdu preparing for a series of stories on China starting next week. Melissa was conducting an interview on tape when the earthquake struck after 2:00 p.m. yesterday (Tuesday), local time. All of a sudden you could hear rattling and shaking and after a pause Melissa said, "What's happening?" She started describing the quake, including exclaiming that the top of a church was falling over.

Yesterday afternoon her story about the children who had died in the school that collapsed, and the wailing mothers looking for them and finding them dead as they were pulled out, reduced me to tears, and then today I found myself crying on the way in and again on the way home with on-the-spot reports by Melissa and Robert. Melissa caught me off-guard when she concluded another piece about the school with the comment that with China's one-child policy, these were the only babies of most of the unconsolable women. I suppose this is all the more real to me since I sit at home at night next to Lingling and Ouwen watching the Mandarin news at 10:00 p.m. on channel 26 and hearing her mutter "oh, no" every time a new tragedy appears on the screen. She is from Shanghai but has been to Sichuan many times as Ouwen's grandfather was custom's chief for the Sichuan area.

Tonight we had a partial respite watching CNN's entertaining analysis of Hillary Clinton's landslide win in the West Virginia primary. We've been strong Hillary supporters since before Super Tuesday, but it looks like a very long shot despite her win today.

See China Diary on NPR.org for more (http://www.npr.org/chinadiary)

Larry