Zhonguo Mei Mei

Hello and welcome back Phillis! Don't underestimate yourself by the way, you and Gwennie are my audience! OK so you may be wondering about the photo. I went along with a group of girlfriends a couple of weeks ago and tarted up China style for a photo shoot. It was heaps of fun. Quite the thing to do if you are a Chinese girl (translation of the title 'Chinese little sister'). You actually get a book full of fancy pictures of yourself! You may notice that I have been photoshopped and airbrushed....just a bit!

The past few weeks have been really amazing. The earthquake has shone a light on this country the likes of which the Olympics could never do. For the first time, flags flew at half mast (even in T Square) in mourning of 'common people'. This has never happened before for 'the people', only in commemoration of the passing of 'important' folks like the big M and the like. Many commentators have commentated that it marks the turning of a corner where the value of the common human life is given value like never before. I hope so. Although I just finished watching the 4 Corners special on the trafficking of children and women in China. But as they say, small steps are better than none. The fund raising has been incredible though. I can't imagine that in 1973 (I think) when more than 250,000 were killed in another catastrophic earthquake, that there was much public awareness, let alone the kind of fund raising efforts we have seen. I was proud that my school raised about 96,000RMB (about 15,000AUD). I have seen on local TV, some shows that look I guess like our equivalent of the telethon, where people are lined up one after the other proudly declaring how much they have donated.

One week after the earthquake the country marked a 3 minute national mourning period, to coincide with the time the earthquake hit and the length of time it went on for. Our school did it the sombre way, by observing 3 minutes of silence, during which I had my grade 11 Biology class. I asked them to stand and I had some powerpoint pictures from the news websites for them to watch. I was holding back the tears. My class, bless them, are lovely and it was a meaningful moment for us. I kept thinking about all the new orphans and all the parents who lost their children and who may now be too old to have another child. Some may have been sterilized after the birth of their first (and only) child and may never be able to have another one. Many of the school buildings were, in some towns, the only ones to be destroyed because they for some reason were subject to very poor building safety standards. The rest of the country observed a 'national cry of anguish', where all horns, alarms and sirens were sounded for 3 minutes. I didn't hear it from school but Andrew did and he said it sounded amazing. I like that idea better than the 3 minute silence. Sometimes when you're p*ssed off you just want to scream.