Oh My God! Do You hear me?

[kcl0341]

Oh My God! Do You hear me?

[sichuan earthquake]

 

 

Doomed, it was a doomsday! The 12th of May.

Eighth grade earthquake had lasted for 5 minutes,

The six-storey teaching building collapsed in a minute,

The remains of the building were about 2 meters high.

There are 21 classrooms in the teaching building.

Majority of the students and teachers were buried in the rubble.

More than 1,000 dead and missing,

This is the North Village Middle School

It has been assessed as the best secondary school in Sichuan.

 

I am a Grade 11 math teacher.

Teachers and students are very close,

Just like parents to the students.

My wife is also a teacher of the school.

My daughter who is in grade 6, is preparing for the final examination.

She has the confidence to be qualified to enter the Beijing University.

She often tells me that she will serve the people and the country with her whole heart.

Wife and I are receiving with a meagre income.

How could we send her to the Beijing University?

A year ago I really wanted to leave the teaching career.

Oh My God! Why not quitted the job?

My family and I should have left the school!

 

On the day of the earthquake, I had my holiday.

I stayed at home alone and was preparing the lecture for tomorrow.

At 2:28 afternoon, all in a sudden the earthquake came.

The whole house kept shaking,

Electric fans, fluorescent lamps had been falling.

Thank God! I am a survivor.

Why not let me die? I would have suffered less.

 

Struck dumb, I was standing in the middle of the street.

Where were my wife and daughter?

Strong fear and worry came to my mind.

I immediately went to get my bike but it had been buried.

Without any hesitation, I ran towards the North Village Middle School.

Could I run faster? I wished I could fly to the school.

 

Along all the way, tragic screaming and painful groaning,

Filled the whole earth.

Thousands of people, heads and hands were bleeding.

This was a tragic scene like a big war just ended.

 

It took me an hour to run to the North Village Middle School.

Fear and anxiety, getting stronger and stronger while I was running.

Oh My God! What wrong have I done?

My wife is a very dedicated teacher.

She treats her students as her own children.

My daughter is righteous and kind.

She wishes to be a doctor and to serve the poor.

How cruel that God let such people die!

Many times I had fallen onto the ground,

My hands and feet were bleeding but I did not feel painful.

 

Look! I could see the North Village Middle School!

No! That was not the school.

The teaching building was gone.

A student named Liu Qian patted my back.

She cried: “Madame Yao had saved four students.

Without any hesitation, she went back to the teaching building.

We have called out her name continuously but no response.”

I asked her and other students whether they had seen my daughter.

They said no.

 

The ruins were about two meters high,

I started searching for my wife and daughter in the ruins.

We called their names as loud as we could.

But we only heard the groan.

I started moving the rubble.

More than 10 students, teachers and parents came to help me.

One of the exhumed dead bodies - both hand and foot were lost.

We had got out over 5 dead bodies out of the ruin.

Appalling and disgusting!

We were too tired to continue to do anything.

It was raining.

Our last hope was to wait for rescue teams.

 

That evening, I and more than 10 students,

In the playground, despite the cold wind roared,

We lied down on the ground, hands holding hands.

Looked up to the pale sky.

I had the idea that they must have fled the disaster,

And went back to our home.

 

It was about 6:00 am, under a drizzle.

Hundreds of parents standing around the ruins,

Called their own children’s names.

They helped each other, and dug up the dead bodies.

Parents embraced their own sons and daughters, although dead.

Sobbing and crying were mixed with the dripping noise of the rain.

 

The communications with outside were entirely disrupted.

Waiting, anxiously waiting for the rescue teams,

About 8 am, hundreds of armed police reached the ruins.

Preliminary estimates, more than 1,000 dead and missing persons.

Everyone entreated the police to save their children first.

I have never seen such a tragic and chaotic scene.

Dead bodies dug up and unclaimed, were piled up to a small hill.

In the absence of heavy machinery, rescue was carried out very slowly.

I wished to go home, but dared not leave.

If they could not meet me at home, they will come to this place.

 

It was a long night, filled with fear, anxiety, and heartbreaking.

My God! What wrong have the students and their parents done,

That You the almighty God should have treated them like this?

Two thousand years ago when the kings encountered major natural disasters,

They would ask God to forgive them and have mercy on people.

Should we blame the People's Government?

My God! Do you mean that you want President Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao

Beg for your forgiveness?

Ridiculous!

The old will bury the young in thousands.

Grief spreads everywhere in the whole world.

My God, do you know how cruel you are!

 

It was the 15th of May, early in the morning.

Thousand of the People's Liberation Army, came to our rescue.

Premier Wen had been here, but I had not seen him.

I met the volunteers from Tangshan, who had suffered from grade 7.8 earthquake.

They had been fighting in the front line.

I found out their captain.

He immediately headed his team to the location, where my wife or daughter could be found.

They found my wife – dead!

The back of her body was upward, protecting a student from being hurt.

I felt dizzy and my feet failed me.

Some students helped me to lie down on some soft stuff in the tent.

 

My daughter's classroom was at the highest level of the teaching building.

She should be able to escape in time.

She might be in the vicinity of our home waiting for me.

I endeavoured to keep my eyes open as I was very sleepy.

Concentrated on watching each of the bodies dug up,

Very few survivors were found.

I decided to go home.

 

On the 16th of May, I finally returned to the North Village - my home,

The building was 80% collapsed.

The whole county had turned ruins.

I could not find my daughter.

The seriously injured victims were rushed to Mianyang City.

From TV at the temporary rescue depot I could see the program conducted by the China Central Television.

Premier Wen Jiabao in Mianyang City cordially comforted the injured,

He embraced the children with tears wetting his eyes.

Under Premier Wen’s urge, the seven-year-old girl was rescued.

He ordered the army, by all means to save fellow countrymen.

He told the PLA it is the people who have provided them with what they need!

Leaders in hundreds from the party, government, military and corporate CEOs were present.

Each of them put into the donation boxes from thousands to millions dollars in cash.

Three female student survivors who had lost their family members cried bitterly.

Four soldiers of the PLA told the audience how dangerous they had encountered.

But all these touching episodes had not moved me.

As I was very depressed and sad.

I swallowed tears every now and then.

My heart was aching with great pain.

 

On the 17th May I arrived Mianyang City.

I had searched nearly all the hospitals but could not find my daughter.

All the teachers and students had been arranged to stay in Jiuzhou Stadium.

There I met many of my students.

To my surprise, they did not show any sign of sadness in their faces.

Many students were wearing new clothes,

And will soon resume classes,

I am pleased to see they had a strong will to encounter the big disaster.

A student had just arrived an hour ago.

Out of 53 in his class he was the only survivor.

He swore he would study very hard for he owed his life to many people.

 

As a teacher, I should forget my own grief.

And tried my best to comfort and encourage students.

Nearly all students felt gratitude and were thankful to the people.

Governments and international voluntary agencies,

Had rendered help in a selfless manner.

The students said:

The Chinese people have always been indomitable.

The disaster would make them stronger.

Premier Wen wrote something on the blackboard.

“Disasters would make our people and country stronger”.

 

May 26 I had got the following information from different sources:

Death: 68,500 people

Missing: 19,500 people

Injuries: 365,000 people

Survivors: millions

School: 7000 classrooms collapsed

Aftershock: 9,000 times

 

Oh God, how cruel you are! You are a merciless God!

Who has made you so angry that you need to shake the whole earth?

You have ruined Wenchuan, Green Village, North Village and many other places.

Villagers are innocent! They have been working hard just to be able to survive.

Should you have no mercy on these innocent people?

Oh God! Please speak out, otherwise I will curse you!

Suddenly a lightning with great thunder struck across the sky.

It seemed God was speaking to me:

 

“Listen! Though you have received higher education,

You are really ignorant,

Or you have become a coward under the authoritarian regime.

 

The teaching building of your school had collapsed completely in less than 2 minutes.

But the other city and county government buildings and the schools built by foreign capital did not collapse.

A large number of casualties were mainly caused by the collapse of the buildings.

You should doubt of the cause of this big this disaster.

The original price of a tent is $1,000.

But the Chinese Red Cross paid $13,000 to purchase it.

The Disaster Relief food was sent to the stores for sale.

River Weihe got a big flood two years ago. The state had donated 59 million dollars through the local government.

But the victims totally only received a half million.

Designated by the Government people can only contribute to the official three institutions namely:

Ministry of Civil Affairs, Red Cross Society of China, China Charity Federation.

Corruption has been practised among the officers in nearly all the local governments.

Do you still believe their credibility?

Sichuan Province is situated at the belt of earthquake.

Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate have moved towards each other for years.

In the last ten years a large number of mining officials, hollowed out of the underground.

Big dams have been constructed along the Three Gorges.

Along the river Min Jiang hundreds of small dams were built for power generation.

The crust of the earth has been disrupted.

Otherwise, this earthquake might take a hundred years before it occurred.

 

China today is a big country.

It has been known as the factory of the world.

The national treasury has a tremendous surplus.

Many countries want to do business with China that has a population of 1.3 billion.

Sharon Stone who has supported Tibet for human right, needed to say sorry to China.

Millions of the armed forces are well equipped with modern weapons.

Aerospace Science and Technology are catching up with Europe and the United States,

Long-range missiles can be launched into New York.

 

Spent more than 400 billion dollars of running the Olympic Games.

For this is the best time to show to the world how strong is the nation,

And to encourage patriotism of the Chinese people.

Dalai La Ma has nearly been identified as Osama bin Laden.

Obviously the disaster is very difficult to deal with.

President Hu and Premier Wen are very clever.

They have made Chinese all over the world deeply touched.

Patriotic sentiment rising,

Sichuan Come on! China Come on!

Contributions have reached 37 billion in less than a month.

People have not realised that it was corruption that has killed 70,000.

 

Once God created this world, He will not interfere with human behaviour.

Nature has prepared everything for you and you are self-sufficient.

If you do something wrong, you will pay for it.

This is Karma.

 

You can no longer remain silent,

Politicians will be increasingly arbitrary.

Officials abuse power for personal gains; corruption will be intensified.

You have forgotten 19 years ago, "the democracy movement on June 4".

Students from universities were against corruption and fought for freedom of speech.

Atlas! People's Liberation Army shot and killed thousands of students and the people,

Some people think if not that the success of repression,

China will not have today's prosperity.

Why not, if the "pro-democracy movement on June 4" reform to succeed,

States will be more prosperous.

With Freedom of Speech, officers are naturally subject to the supervision of the people.

In the May 12 earthquake,

The dead and injured students and people would be only a few hundred.

 

The country needs courageous people to speak out what they want.

The earthquake should have given a lot of lessons to the government.

Silence is a sign of cowardice.

Do not just cry, mourn, and donate money.

You have to shout: we need to have freedom, democracy and justice.

Patriotism is often made used by the politician to cover up their hypocrisy.

The main component of a country is its people.

The government is formed to serve people.

Awake! It is the time for the Chinese people to seek their own right as a citizen.

 

Thunder and rain had stopped,

It seems I have had a big dream.

Shall I still curse and blame God?

 

 

June 4, 2008

 

K.C.Lee

[Pyrotex]

Wow.

Like having my head opened up with a crowbar.

I don't know what to say, other than... Wow.

[DougF]

:thumbs_up :applause: :shrug: :applause: :thumbs_up

[Southtown]

Who is this "God" you speak of?

[kcl0341]

The original article is written in Chinese and no such word God has been mentioned. We Chinese believe that the "sky" has the all the power as what God has. So when I turned my Chinese version into English version, I need to mention God as this is the only way to express my feeling.

 

kcl0341

King Lee

[modest]

It is a very moving story. Is this your story, Lee? It's difficult to tell if you are reproducing an article or if this first-person recollection refers to you.

 

Either way it has left me speechless.

 

~modest

[kcl0341]

Dear Modest,

 

I am very sorry that I have broken the rule. Hope you will forgive me for just one time. You could call me Lee as this is my family name. I am a permanant resident of Hong Kong, and was born in Hong Kong. For certain, the article is not the first-person recollection. I have collected information mostly from newspapers and TV special programme.

 

Thanks for your encouragement!

 

King Lee

(kcl0341)

[Southtown]

The original article is written in Chinese and no such word God has been mentioned. We Chinese believe that the "sky" has the all the power as what God has. So when I turned my Chinese version into English version, I need to mention God as this is the only way to express my feeling.

 

kcl0341

King Lee

Thank you very much. I dig that outlook completely because it resembles my concept of "heaven." Also it makes the rest of your poetry that much more beautiful.

[modest]

Dear Modest,

 

I am very sorry that I have broken the rule. Hope you will forgive me for just one time.

 

King Lee refers to cross posting the OP which was no big deal at all.

 

You could call me Lee as this is my family name.

 

I should have easily recognized that Lee is a surname, but honestly, I did not :) I'm used to a Chinese family name being written first. Would it have been more appropriate to say "Mr. Lee" or "King"?

 

I am a permanant resident of Hong Kong, and was born in Hong Kong. For certain, the article is not the first-person recollection. I have collected information mostly from newspapers and TV special programme.

 

Is the person in the story Liu Ning?

Heart-rending stories abound. A school teacher helped save his 59 students, only two were hurt. His two hands were badly cut and bleeding when he tried to save his students. His school had 2, 600 students, now more than 1, 000 of them are buried under the rubble.

 

His own daughter, who was a secondary student, died when her school collapsed. He rushed to her school after saving his students and she was still alive. For two days, he and rescuers tried to get to the buried students. He never got his daughter back .... alive.

 

-

source

 

TEACHER SAVES 59 STUDENTS, BUT LOSES DAUGHTER

 

Liu Ning burst into tears when he saw the corpse of his daughter, a ninth-grader at Beichuan Middle School. Reporters clearly felt his grief and couldn't hold back their tears.

 

Liu, a teacher at the school, saved all the 59 seventh-graders in his class when they were attending a party at an auditorium off the campus. "The building rocked and I knew it was an earthquake."

 

He instructed the students to hide under the chairs, which shielded them from falling rubble.

 

When the quake was over and they went out, they found the county was flattened. They went back to school, only to find its building had been reduced to rubble.

 

Liu's only daughter Liu Yi was buried in the ruins. On Monday her classmates said she was stuck under the desk and had foot injuries. Rescuers said she was probably killed by further collapses in the aftershocks.

 

-

source

Unfortunately, news coverage of the quake was scarce here in the states. It's ridiculous how little coverage the rest of the world is given. I noticed you said you lived in Washington so you've probably noticed the same thing. Without the internet I would have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world :)

 

~modest