current events: June 2008 Archives

Da Zha Lan before City's more recent glamorous days was a dump, and before people's republic was city's red light district. Now the city pured millions into a revitalization project. I heard a lot about it and decided to pay a visit. When I got close to it, I felt like I'm in Xin Tian Di in Shang Hai, its such a film set, everything is brand spanking new, and... old at the same time. I am happy for Da Zha Lan, this area is in a disparate need for face lift, but to have it completely demolished and turned into a... even older, distant era than before, I question its value and authenticity, for a brief moment I felt the area was not built for me, it no longer belongs to the people that lived in Beijing, its just for tourists, then very quickly I realized, maybe its for both, a reminder for Beijingers as well, as we were deprived of this part of history for so long also.

I was in US when the quake happened. two days after, there are news reports on schools being the only building in certain areas that had collapsed. I forgot which news report it was, but I did remember it was a Chinese news channel. When I came back to Beijing, and continued to follow the news, such news piece weren't mentioned at all, and when I brought that up to some friends, they were suspicious of me, believing in the western media.

Of course I have to admit that not being in the actual areas, I can't say for sure, but today, this news came out on CNN. Of course, for all you sensitive types and conspiracy theorists, its a report from the western news source, read it at your discretion. On Baidu, I do know this: 在绵竹市五福镇,唯一倒塌的建筑是第二小学校舍,造成大约300名学生死亡。(300 students died from the only collapsed building, their school building in the town of Wu Fu, in the City of Mianzhu.) The news piece originated from Reuters and has since been confirmed.

Whatever the case maybe, I hope the media here in China can be even more transparent as they promised to be. Tibet has been a really good lesson for a country with slow reacting media, in which caused a great deal of misunderstanding and deliberate inflammatory reports from the western countries. By keeping stories that suggests spotty school building construction from the public is going backwards and for sure it will attract the same type of scrutiny as the Tibet incident.