I was sitting in an internet cafe in Xi'an when my chair started shaking. I looked around to find out who was shaking it. There wasn't anyone so I went back to typing. At which point everyone else in the internet cafe launched themselves towards the stairs. It turned out it we were feeling an aftershock of 6.4 magnitude from Sichuan. Xi'an is the closest I have been to the epicentre of the earthquake. The building didn't fall down and the greatest danger seemed to come from the crowd rushing down the stairs. Outside everyone had gone into the streets and was standing around relaying their tremor stories. I was curious to know what an earthquake felt like but I wasn't best pleased to feel it in a building that didn't look tremendously sturdy. I did eye the ceiling with some trepidation.
While I have been in China the two big news stories have been the Olympic Torch Relay in China and the Earthquake. The trouble in China is if you don't speak Mandarin it can be quite difficult to follow what is going on. It is not always possible to find the English language news channel and internet cafes are hard to come by (if the news websites haven't got a block on them). If you do get the English language news channel (CCTV9) then it doesn't necessarily fill you in with unbiased information. The coverage I do see is more like a disaster movie and is heavily concentrated on the heroic actions of the rescuers. There is no questioning of why certain buildings fell down. The only critical coverage I have seen has come from international news media outlets, such as the the Herald International newspaper, on the BBC news website, and on the NY Times website. Here is an article from the New York Times which you would never see in the Chinese media. The 3 days of mourning passed me by. I was climbing up and down a mountain for two of them and only found out about watching the news on the top. What I do find strange is how the earthquake is being spun as an opportunity for China to be one nation and face adversity together. I understand that is how most societies react but it seems that acting as one in China equates to crowds of people chanting (or that is at least how the media presents it). They have also taken to calling the earthquake 5.12 in echo of 9.11.
While I have been in China the two big news stories have been the Olympic Torch Relay in China and the Earthquake. The trouble in China is if you don't speak Mandarin it can be quite difficult to follow what is going on. It is not always possible to find the English language news channel and internet cafes are hard to come by (if the news websites haven't got a block on them). If you do get the English language news channel (CCTV9) then it doesn't necessarily fill you in with unbiased information. The coverage I do see is more like a disaster movie and is heavily concentrated on the heroic actions of the rescuers. There is no questioning of why certain buildings fell down. The only critical coverage I have seen has come from international news media outlets, such as the the Herald International newspaper, on the BBC news website, and on the NY Times website. Here is an article from the New York Times which you would never see in the Chinese media. The 3 days of mourning passed me by. I was climbing up and down a mountain for two of them and only found out about watching the news on the top. What I do find strange is how the earthquake is being spun as an opportunity for China to be one nation and face adversity together. I understand that is how most societies react but it seems that acting as one in China equates to crowds of people chanting (or that is at least how the media presents it). They have also taken to calling the earthquake 5.12 in echo of 9.11.
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