My Experience During the Sichuan Earthquake: Memoir

I was about to begin my first class of the afternoon, when at first I thought the student closest to my desk was knocking against it, it was rocking. It didn't take me long to realize this was not an overexcited student knocking into my desk. I was unaware that we were deep into an earthquake prone area, it hadn't occurred to me to ask. It was clear from the moment that we all were safely outside several minutes later that this had been a big one, and that somewhere someone had to have been on the receiving end of this one. The buildings in our school had been shaken for a couple of minutes, although no obvious damage or immediate injuries were apparent I was still amazed when a few minutes later we returned to class and were expected to resume teaching these kids.

Once that class was over we had a ten minute break before taking the next class, I had cancelled my normal lesson for now, I was showing music videos, or some of the funny clips I had collected to try to keep the students amused and others just wanted to ask me questions about earthquakes, I assure you this was my first one I was no authority on the subject.

As that class came to a close and everyone filed outside, I was given an almost instant translation of a message being relayed over the loudspeaker. The epicenter was less than 200 miles away (too close for comfort), it was close to Chengdu city (we had friends there, it would be many days before we could contact them), and the casualty figures were expected to be high.

The classes for the rest of the day were cancelled; we had to remain outside and away from the buildings. Most people were congregated around the many communal areas of the school; we were playing badminton with some of the students.

Around 7.00pm we were informed that it was ok for the students to return to their classes and continue with their lessons, as foreign teachers we were finished for the day. Our first task was to try and get messages to the outside world that we were ok; this event had to have been reported outside China. As we checked the internet for news and updates we quickly realized many schools had been affected, it was later reported that 500 schools across the affected area had collapsed, many thousands of students and teachers would be among the casualties of this catastrophe. We then realized that had we applied to a different job vacancy or to a different employer how easily we could have found ourselves in the middle of all this and not on the fringes.

That first night we had further aftershocks, and many false alarms. Over the first few days every class we attended most of the students were watching every piece of news on the state run TV. One of the most difficult moments for me was exactly one week after the event and returning to the same class for the three minutes silence in respect for those lost in the disaster. The silence was impeccably observed in the class I was in, many students sobbing uncontrollably. In the west if an event of this magnitude occurs then the whole country or at least the immediate area stops. Yet here we were still teaching, or at least attending class. Many of the students were deeply affected by this, but there was no counseling set up for any of them. I was amazed that classes were just continuing, though far from normal.

Over the next few days and weeks as the news reached its peak and disappeared from the headlines, we had many, many aftershocks. Lots of these were so powerful they could have been classed as fresh earthquakes, yet still they were called aftershocks. Our apartment was on the seventh floor, all these fresh shocks were beginning to take there toll on the building. We started to walk around our apartment checking for cracks, or more to the point, existing cracks getting bigger. One day during a break from lessons I noticed a worker going round filling up the cracks in the school buildings and later these would be painted over, so it would appear as though the school was completely undamaged, yet in our apartment the cracks only got bigger.

As we were coming to the end of our year's contract at the school, we decided not to renew for another year and just leave. We wanted the feeling of solid earth beneath our feet once again and not to look at each other with the anguished look of is that another one?