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Sichuan Earthquake

God, where are you?

The world has broken and

I am surrounded by death,

It could have been me

And I am so ashamed

I’m here when young lives

They were lives once

Are lying in the broken world

Still like eggs in the market

When snow fills the roof

Bringing it to the ground

Burma Flood

Gods upstairs fighting

crashing and throwing

buckets of water

banging the pails

shaking trees like

rice in a winnow bowl

then the world filled with water

houses drowned and we ran

without hills to help us

no Gods put hills here

our houses were too low

so my daughter drowned

my wife was swept away

she didn’t come back

I am waiting for

government gods in Yangon

to undo the work

of the gods upstairs

but they have not come

my neighbour has the

bad shit another flood

and her body will be

a dry husk of rice

to be planted

never to grow again

This week I watched with mounting horror as the news of the terrible earthquake in Sichuan province of China became worse and worse. Today the floodgates of my heart overflowed when I received news that three of my students have lost friends or relatives in it and that others are waiting anxiously for news of loved ones in the area. Another girl used to impress me with her dedicated participation in an organization of student volunteers who go to poorer areas to help villagers. Today I learned that she was helping a year ago in one of the schools that collapsed and that the village she went to stay in for a week or more has been totally destroyed. I can’t imagine how you feel Christina. Your heart must be full of sorrow and you must be searching for reasons in your mind. Me too. I don’t know why such things happen.

My friend Carole is teaching my classes and that’s how I know about my students’ grief. Carole has been doing the only thing possible at times like these, opening her heart and her arms to comfort her students. I wish I were there to do the same. She cries with them and so do I. Carole sent me a link to a site with lots of tragic photos of scenes in the earthquake zone, including the horror of dead children in the ruins of their schools. Why look at such things? Because to see these made it real to me and I wept uncontrollably, as we all should.

The Chinese government has responded quickly and efficiently, pouring troops into the area to save who can be saved. The photos also illustrate their excellent effort. Well done China.

Let us not forget the people of the Delta area in Burma (Myanmar) whose government has obstructed international efforts to help and perhaps even taken possession of aid supplies without deploying them to the devastated areas. Now the one and a half million people affected by the flood are in danger of epidemics of diseases that flourish in the conditions left by the cyclone, of polluted water and the rise in populations of disease carrying insects. With almost all crops destroyed by the torrential rain and flooding they need food to be given to them and their government is obstructing its delivery. There is a real chance of many thousands more dying for these reasons.

I thought I had finished writing critical appraising articles about China but there is one thing I rediscovered amongst my notes today that I will write because it holds an important caution for tourist thinking of buying electronic goods there and to any young student of mine who might one day think of starting a business in selling electronic goods. Don’t do it this way guys. It is really well known that one should never handle electronic circuits with uncovered hands or fingers. Those circuits are etched so finely that just a trace of oil from the hands can destroy the circuit or just a tiny spark of static electricity can wipe portions of memory, again rendering the circuit useless.

In Wuhan I had two experiences of witnessing shop assistants demonstrating ignorance or blithe disregard of those two essential pieces of knowledge. The first was when I went to buy an auxiliary hard drive for my computer. It was one of those little ones that fit in a small case and connect to the computer through a USB port. The drive came separately from the case and had to be fitted in and the sales assistant knew it was good service for him to put them together for me. I watched horrified as he put his hands all over the circuits on the drive and I had to complain to his boss. Fortunately the boss knew some English and together with my rudimentary Chinese we soon understood each other and he replaced the drive with another, and took great care not to handle the sensitive parts.

Not long after that I went looking to an electronic sales centre for additional RAM for my laptop and rejected stall after stall as I looked at memory sticks lying exposed on the counters and assistants handling the memory sticks with their fingers and ensuring that they would not last long. At last I was relieved to find a shop staffed by a person who obviously knew his work and handled each electronic product carefully by its edges, avoiding contact with the vulnerable circuits.

To Westerners looking forward to shopping in China I tell you that many Chinese shopkeepers do not know much at all about the products they sell. Their job is to sell and to do that they memorise the blurb on the packages and the manufacturers leaflets. They have little understanding of the functions of devices they have in stock and if it is not in their stock they will never have heard of it. The concept of keeping up with the literature has never entered their minds and is certainly not encouraged by the shop bosses. Rule through keeping the peasants ignorant was a common power ploy in Chinese history and perhaps most bosses use it to this day. This disadvantages any customer who wants real information also,of course.

After a few years of experiences of shopping in this kind of environment I found it almost exhilarating when I discovered a shop assistant who had knowledge of his or her product or even the stock she carried, without having to consult senior staff or a book. I remember one charming girl in a cellphone shop who was able to answer questions I put to her and I took two friends there to buy their phones. It was appropriate and a pleasure to praise her for her knowledge and tell her she was exceptional as a shop assistant because of it.

To my Chinese friends, if you are ever in the position of selling make it one of your interests in life to know your field. Find out everything about the rival products and be able to tell the customer about new models that are arriving next week or even in six months time. Then also get to know the products so well you can tell the customers the advantage of one over the other and, with cellphones, what services they can connect to, who will provide the services and at what cost. If you are clear, informed and honest and want the customer’s satisfaction instead of a one time profit you will get repeat business. This stuff is so rare in China, well, Wuhan at least, that you will soon rise above your competitors.

It was Wednesday morning and Wuhan airport had been closed for three days by the snow. The media were calling it a snow disaster for Wuhan and people were dying as flimsy roofs were collapsing, built without permit and with no inkling that there would ever be snow like this in Wuhan. Transport routes were cut and fruit and vegetables were not arriving for market. it was this Wednesday that I had chosen for my departure. BMW called the airport and the early news was good. It was open. My friend Michael, who was to have arrived in Wuhan on Sunday, was amazed at my luck.

BMW and I lugged my cases downstairs and along the central driveway of the estate to hail a cab. About half an hour later, fingers freezing and painful we at last found an unoccupied taxi and drove across to Wuhan to be greeted by our friends at the Hangda company. The journey had taken about forty minutes more than usual so by the time they fed us a farewell feast it was time to go to the airport. With their usual generosity they had provided a company car and driver so I was at Tian He Fei Ji Chang at just the right time. I was soon waiting for the gate to open and the runway remained clear. My flight to Korea, where I would transfer to an Australian bound aeroplane, left exactly on time.

The staff were excellent, courteous and attentive on both flights. There was a momentary freezing blast through a gap in the sheltered walkway to the terminal but I had little need of the thermal underwear and heavy Malboro jacket I had worn. After the flight to Australia was aloft and cruising I went to the airport loo and shed the thermals. The temperature was warmish even then, but not too bad.

The journey was as usual with airplane journeys, somewhat boring, low stimulus. My companion was a young Brisbane man who had just been on tour in Europe and was constantly coughing. It sounded pretty nasty and he assured me everyone on his bus tour had succumbed to it. I determined not to allow it to conquer me.

I didn’t sleep a wink and had mild discomfort with my breathing at times, but sipping various drinks kept a dry mouth symptom under control and I consider I did well. We landed in Brisbane at 6.10 a.m.

The whole trip was routine, from -7 degrees in Wuhan to about 23 degrees in Brisbane at a time of year that is often a very unpleasant 30+. There was a small time dissonance about when I was expected by my family but by the time I had converted my cash and bought a phone simcard Peter, my son, arrived to get me. he saved me the problem of trying to haul forty-something kilograms of luggage up a central city station staircase and we were soon in his car on the way home. An hour or two of winding down and chat and I went to sleep for the first time in about thirty hours.

Just before I decided to leave China it began to snow. As I prepared myself psychologically and logistically the temperature descended and it became very difficult for me to leave the house as the cold air entering my lungs made my symptoms immediately worse. The day of departure came nearer and I slowly made sense of my belongings and explored how to arrange them and have them transferred home. BMW gradually focussed on my situation and in the end made all the difference between my bringing the majority of my treasures to Australia or having to leave them behind. In four years I had a nice little collection of paintings, ornaments, and craft items as well as various books and other papers that will help me never to forget the Middle Kingdom.

I had collected various friends too, people who had made my stay in China easier, each in their own way. They are the people who helped me retain my faith in the moral core of China, people who are as much against the opportunists, exploiters, cheats and thieves who darken that great country’s character and give her a deservedly bad reputation throughout the world. I met some of the people who see clearly through all of that and want it changed if they ever get the power to do it. I salute you, my wonderful friends and though I was not able to contact all of you I am sure you know if you are one of the ones I am talking about or if you are one of the others. Don’t be too humble, your humility is one of the ways in which you are better than we brash arrogant Westerners. My friends, those of true spirit, will be treasured in my heart. I hope you keep in touch with me and I will try to keep a habit of contacting you too.

As the snow fell each day I spent time remembering those true friends and organizing those material aids to memory. I gained some control over the symptoms that sent me home though I was unable to overcome them completely. When the day came for departure I was ready.

After asking advice from a few friends about the best carrier to send my ‘Art Gallery’, my collection of gifts, souvenirs and other memorabilia home by it seemed the German company DHL was in the lead. There were two problems. The first was that the impressive web site seemed designed to communicate its information to big companies who could afford to employ someone to attend seminars on ‘Understanding how to ship things through DHL’. As a mere expat teacher who just wanted to send some nice things home to help me remember my time in China I felt snubbed. My friends in the Hangda company said they would have a DHL rep come round to give a quote at a not too horrendous rate and I felt relieved. Then they said I should go to the website, download an invoice form, print it and fill it in ready for the rep’s visit, and I began to hear the word ‘impossible’ chanting in my brain like a work by Philip Glass. Luckily another friend asked if I had tried the Post Office. 

That humble institution had been eliminated early in the search, for reasons such as, reputation for disappearance of items during transit, refusal to take DVDs, slow service, etc. BMW and I checked the website and found my things could be sent for less than half the cost of the German company. Though it was said that DVDs for private use could be delivered by DHL I had decided to leave my 283 disks behind, selling them to BMW who was happy to keep them. We had spent many happy hours watching them together. MONEY was also very important to me by now as I wondered how to re-establish my life again in the wonderful world of Oz where the yellow brick roads require cars that work without too much maintenance or too many repairs.

The Post office won the day after agonies of choices. We were helped by our friend the local shopkeeper to find a strong young woman with a handcart to help us and got boxes from the PO to pack things in. It was a last minute process and not all of my allocations of things to boxes were clever. On Tuesday morning BMW and I and the strong young woman went to the PO with four boxes and a bag of clothes to transfer to another box.

The first box was handed over for checking and when we answered ‘crockery’ to a question about one item the clerk told us it would be broken and tried to take it out. I laughed and told her to leave it in. it was unthinkable at that stage to consider changing anything to another box and giving it to DHL who guarantee there will be no breakages. I had such a struggle to organize things that far that I had no energy to rethink. The big snow in Wuhan was causing all sorts of difficulties including disrupting international postage services. Somehow international mail could not be sent if the PO was not online and the connection had failed every afternoon for a few days. This made me edgy when the box tying process took a very, very long time and other customers came thrusting their goods at the clerk, who would obligingly put our work aside and serve them. Then we were given forms in quintuplicate to fill out and we borrowed a pen and set to work. This branch was out of the largest box size and I thought I would need two, not one but the clerk and I pushed worthy of a wool presser and squeezed clothes and sleeping bag into one. We had to write the address for the sender in Chinese and the receiver in English in prescribed places on each box.

Then we paid a small fee to the box seller/packer/inspector and moved on to the counter marked ‘International’ where a leisurely young man did his job of checking that addresses were in the right place and accepting the boxes for transit to Australia. The clerk’s main job seemed to be to check the quintuplicate forms for legibility and they weren’t. BMW and I returned to the desk with the pens and stamps and glue and  drew over the writing on almost every page of these poor quality duplicating sheets before they were finally accepted. Finally the insouciant young fellow finished weighing the boxes and sticking some of the duplicate forms on them and gave me the bill. I paid and we left. The payment was the only part of the process I was happy with as it really didn’t cost much at all. Much less than DHL. I was told the boxes would not arrive for three months and when I took that in I wished I had been more practical in my packing scheme and realized I would have to buy more undies when I got to Australia. Then I just turned and reeled off out of there into the -7 degree cold and went to the tea shop for a warm drink before going home to do the last of the organizing of my suitcases and carry on backpack.

There is one type of tragedy in China that I have been hearing about constantly since I came here, but it has never come closer than now. I was chatting with a friend the other night and she told me that she had received bad news from two friends. The first was that the brother of a friend had been killed in a traffic accident. You have heard my opinions on Chinese driving, particularly in Wuhan so I won’t go further this time. The second was a tragedy that has been all too common in China and is as strong an indication as any of the ignorant, self-serving, and callously neglectful attitude to business that is so often found in this spiritually disoriented nation.

When in High School one of my friend’s schoolmates had an accident serious enough to require a blood transfusion. This girl grew up to be clever and attractive, completed a university degree, and left her home town to gain a good job in Beijing, where she met a handsome young man and fell in love. Their love grew, then they decided to marry. They chose to obey the government regulation that young couples must have a medical examination before marriage. That is when tragedy revealed its presence. The young woman is HIV positive.

I can only speculate on other aspects of this tragedy. The fiancee might also have HIV as they have been living together for some time. If he hasn’t it is likely that his family will make them separate, such is the outcome oriented and materialistic attitude to marriage among Chinese, and the power of parents over ‘children’. There are many Chinese who rise above this culture so let me not assume but hope that this young man has sufficient love to care for his beloved through the terrible future as HIV turns into AIDS and she gradually descends to death. Or will the course of her progression be slower than his, if he has it?

How could she have been given infected blood? Ten years ago, when she was given the transfusion, AIDS was well known, and infection prevention strategies were no longer news in the medical world. But teams of blood buyers were touring districts in China buying blood from anyone they could persuade, collecting it with unsterilized equipment. These people were interested in gaining quantity at the cheapest price possible and didn’t give a damn about the welfare of the donors. They would then take the ‘product’ to hospitals and sell it and the hospitals would buy it with scant regard to the integrity of the supply process.

I cried as the enormity of what my friend was telling me hit home. A young woman and young man’s lives ruined. One, and perhaps two people preparing for happiness given instead sentences to early death. The killer an institution that was founded to save lives. When will such crimes cease in this terrible world of ours?

I am pleased to say that my employment experience in China has ended on a good note. My contract was not clear about whether the university I have been working at had to pay me a one way airfare home after teaching for one semester, so I was prepared for the worst. I will name this institution because they chose to interpret the policy in my favour and also gave me my holiday bonus. So today I had the equivalent of a thousand Aussie dollars delivered to me, refunding my fare home and giving me the holiday bonus. Fine people. Thank you to the staff of Huazhong Keji Daxue, Wuchang Fenxiao (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuchang Branch). I wish you all well for the future.

I must say my experience at that University has been entirely satisfactory. Senior staff were cordial in their relations with me and whenever I asked for help they tried their best to accommodate my request, within the limitations of the system they must work within. I particularly thank Professor Gu, for hiring me, Professor Li for being such a helpful and friendly supervisor, Mrs. Liu whose generous approval of financial matters is noted above, Rocky and Amber for being the best foreign liaison officers I can imagine, as well as the staff responsible for classroom equipment who gave me so much help operating the computers for me and helping me change rooms when I needed to use special equipment. Thank you also to teacher Wang, Emil, Ann, and others for your friendship to me.

Goodbye to all of you and you can be sure it is with regret that I faced the realities of my health condition and asked leave to return home.

In Australia we have an old joke. What would happen if all the cars in Australia were lined up end to end? Answer? Some silly fool would try to pass them!

On Christmas Eve I finished my class and took my usual bus for home. Twenty minutes later I should have been stepping off onto my local street. Not so. The journey took two hours. Luckily I had as my companion a jocund economics teacher with a lovely command of English and perspectives well beyond the limitations of most of his countrymen. It is rare to find a Chinese citizen who can laugh and joke on par with a Celt but God gave me this gift to help me endure the traffic jam.

We twisted and turned through a series of back streets and came out on one of the major streets that formed an arm of a major crossroads. As soon as we came onto the major street the bus stopped and for over an hour as we approached the crossroads our pace never reached a walk in the small intervals of movement we achieved. The street had six lanes divided by a central grassed strip. The grassed strip was raised by a ten inch kerb so it was impossible for vehicles to mount it. Our bus was on the left, next to the strip and my seat was also on the left. After about fifteen minutes I jolted to attention, noticing that there was another line of vehicles to my left, going in our direction on the other side of the median strip. It was made up of buses and trucks, mainly, asserting their right as ‘heavies’ to pass anything that got in the way. As we ‘progressed’ I saw that, characteristically, to the left of the heavies a line had built of another sort of heavy, more expensive looking cars, usually black. Cars of this sort in China seem to believe they can do anything they want. Isn’t it lovely how we speak of cars doing anything they want rather than the driver they personify?

I sat wondering where the police were? They were nowhere to be seen and they were making no attempt to stop the insane disobedience of the heavies. We continued toward the nexus of this phenomenon, my companion and I exchanging snide remarks and chuckling occasionally. I looked to my right and noticed that another extra line of cars, perhaps two, were progressing along the service road and footpath! Eventually, we got to the intersection where the police were feebly trying to move people in a way that gave a modicum of progress.  As we crossed the intersection at a snail’s pace I looked around me and saw that each arm of the crossroads had six or sometimes seven lanes of converging traffic and only one outlet lane. The Police were doing nothing at all to deal with the problem at its source by preventing the six to one phenomenon.

It is a characteristic of Wuhan driving that it runs on the principle of every man for himself. The Police lend validity to this rule of driving by taking no action whatsoever when someone does something outrageously against the written rule of the road. If no one is knocked over it is likely that a driver can get away with breaking any rule he/she feels like breaking.

The behaviour of ‘going round the obstacle’ is standard. If you have two lanes on your side of the centre line and they are blocked ahead of you, you can try going onto the other side of the road to pass them. In fact if you don’t the people behind you will think you are a silly fool. Oh, the oncoming cars? Don’t worry about them, it’s bad manners for them to object to what you are doing. Therefore a common peak hour sight is a road with four lanes in one direction and two in the other, on a four lane road.

It is this behaviour that built up to the situation of six to seven lanes entering that intersection on Christmas Eve from each arm of the hub, while only one lane was left free on each arm for traffic to exit by. How could people be so stupid? No, I don’t apologise for my ill-mannered assessment. It is only logical. Simple, really.

The old joke? Don’t bother telling it in China. No one will understand except my jocular companion. I thank God for him. He saved me from apoplexy by laughing with me.

Dear Students, I have to leave you and return to Australia. Sorry my friends, I didn’t intend this to happen. Unfortunately I have become too sick to continue as your teacher and will go back to my own country. I will miss teaching you and will miss China very much. I hope you will keep visiting my blog so you know what happens to me and I will be very happy if sometimes you write to me in the comments section below. I know your new teacher and she is an interesting person with a very wide experience of life. She loves China as much as I do and has been here for six years. I am sure she will become your friend as I did.

Let me encourage you once more to use English every day outside of classroom life. The more you talk with your friends in English the better your spoken English will become. One day you might become truly bi-lingual. That would be a treasure for life. Performance in exams is nothing if the ability is not there but if the exams reflect true ability you are an excellent student.

There is an unfortunate culture in China that encourages cheating and using ways to gain high scores that avoid the need for true learning. Without true learning there is no true success. It is all ‘emptiness and chasing the wind’. I know you are capable of true learning. If you seek true learning you will achieve true success. I wish you all well. I want you all to become the best kind of people and make your country and your families proud.

Your friend and teacher, Hugh.