AFTERSHOCK THE MOVIE

     tangshan earthquake 1976

I think I have just seen a mainland Chinese disaster movie, the kind that Hollywood makes unreal unto fairytale with cars and buses exploding and tumbling through the air on fire. This disaster movie, made 2 years ago, is astonishing in that it looks so real you can just about feel queasy from seeing what you're seeing. The story started looking at a family, a boy and girl, twins, husband and wife, big city, Tangshan, a hundred or so miles east of Beijing, not far from the coast of a huge bay, Bo Hai, north of the Yellow Sea that's between China and the Korean peninsula. I like to watch especially Chinese and Scandinavian films with my Oxford Atlas of the World at hand. It's almost up to date and loaded with images of continents and islands without political lines, also with them. It has all the -Stans since the passing of the Soviet Union. I like the topographical maps that show Norway is all mountains and Denmark nearly a flat plane. I see landscape in the film and look it up to see where it is. I like the satellite images of cities, to see how they're arranged by street patterns, rivers and bays. I've found a faint familiarity with Copenhagen in film. Not like being on the ground there, but a visual familiarity, like a Fellini film has a corner of the eye visual familiarity with Rome. Rome on the ground is a mass of people and traffic from hell. 

Today's film, AFTERSHOCK, is an historical account of the 1976 earthquake at Tangshan. Not a single building was constructed to withstand an earthquake. It was mostly old and aging buildings, some new, didn't matter. It all came tumbling down in less than 15 minutes. The entire city crumbled to the ground. Outside was no safer than inside with blocks and bricks in the air from crumbling buildings. The recreation of it for film made it as close to being there as Lu Chuan's film, The City of Life and Death, the account of the Rape of Nanjing in 1937. The magnitude of the devastation to a city's population was about the same from the Japanese invasion of Nanjing as the earthquake in Tangshan in 1976. I don't recall Nanking's population figures, but I remember the Japanese killed a third of the city's population, and Chinese cities are tremendously populous. A quarter million died in Tangshan. Usually it's 3 times the number that died that are wounded in one way or another. All survivors were devastated, utterly. These two historical films are sobering to see some of what Chinese people have had to endure in the past few hundred years. Zhang Yimou's TO LIVE is another historical drama from the time of the Revolution on through the Cultural Revolution, what it took to stay alive in China in the 20th Century, and the rigors of living.

Parallel the seeming documentary of the time, we have the story of this family torn apart in just a few minutes. The woman sees her husband walk into a building that collapsed on him, and the upper floors of the building had her two children, who went with the avalanche of the collapsing apartment building. She watched from standing in the street in front of the building. They were collapsing all around her. It wasn't a phony disaster scene like a Hollywood film praised for it's "visual effects," meaning phony ocean waves made by computer, phony buildings toppling, all of it looking so hyper-computer-active there's no sense of reality to it. In these Chinese films, especially this one, Aftershock, it's so real it's unsettling like the chill that runs over the body before a shudder, though without the shudder, just the chill coursing through the blood, it feels like. One woman, meaning it with all her heart, shook her fist at the sky and shouted, God You Bastard!!! (in Chinese). Among the Jews, the Holocaust made many of them say the same thing. I believe I would too. I might have even a little more to add to it. How else can one express one's displeasure? God knows there are times that's a legitimate response. It has no more relevance than hitting the ocean with a whip. However, the gesture is important to the individual feeling the need to vent extreme feelings. 

It's an odd thing that the last three films I've seen, three in three days, have been stories that wrench the heart. It's almost like a contest to see which one can tear me up the worst. At the time of the quake, rescuers found both the kids alive, though barely, and they could only get one, not the other. They forced the mother to decide which to save. She said the son. They dragged the boy out and left the girl. The girl, barely conscious, heard her mother say to save the son. When the girl, pictured above, maybe age 5, woke up, she was lying on the ground among the dead stretched out in rows everywhere. She stood up, saw her father dead next to her. Mother and brother gone. She wandered, following a stream of dazed people wandering. A soldier there for the rescue operation found her, picked her up and took her home. He and his wife were both in the military. They adopted her and raised her as their own. She had a good life, went to medical school in Hangzhou, a city around 600 miles to the south, below Shanghai. We followed her story, the son's story and the mother's story. Mother and son continued in Tangshan. Eventually, about 30 years later, the girl, then in her 30s, living in Canada with an Anglo husband, went back to Tangshan to help with relief over an earthquake that had hit there again. Working in the relief effort, she heard a man telling a woman the story of his experience in the earlier earthquake, she revealed herself and the twins found each other. 

Brother took her to meet mother. Mother broke down into uncontrollable grief believing her dead for 32 years. Girl fell into grief. They both dissolved to the floor on their knees. The initial display of extreme emotion gradually softened on the outside, though never let up on the inside. The story followed this one family to see how they got by over the next 30 years, their lives before, during and after. The title Aftershock refers to the shock that stayed with the survivors all the rest of their lives, a deep wound that never heals. Like the girl, when she's grown and with her father by adoption many years after, she said to him she hears in her head, "Save my son." Abandoned by her mother on the verge of dying, she by chance survived. None of the three ever got their lives back. They amounted to survivors the rest of their lives. They only survived, nothing more. I was grateful for this film like I was grateful for the film about Nanjing. We hear on the news, 250,000 die in China earthquake. We think, there's a lot of people in China. They'll never miss 250,000. If we think that. Just another disaster on the evening news. At least it's not here. If it bleeds it leads. Something to keep us tuned in. These two films show that the "inscrutable" Chinese, who are also faceless to the American populace, feel just like we feel. They care deeply. They have hearts. They have souls. They want to love. They want to be loved. They want to live.

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RELIEF

http://www.thismodernworld.com

Listened to news today for what they're saying about Port au Prince. Exhibiting perfect predictability, the great minds of the Republican Party pronounced their edicts today. Rush Limbaugh's official word to followers, in the true spirit of Katrina, is offer no assistance. Pat Robertson blamed the Haitians for rejecting colonialism 200 years ago. They were slaves then, like they're supposed to be. Breaking out of slavery was a satanic act.

It is the 18th century way of thinking that our white nation is rooted in. The first steps toward Democracy were taken here, held as so great an ideal the white people allied with it. The Brits brought slaves in to get some plantations (outdoor factories) going. How do you have Democracy with slaves? Big conundrum. The common belief was it's not a problem, they're not human, they're Nigerians. Same as with the Indians. To kill one is about the same as killing a dog. It doesn't have a soul, so it doesn't matter what you do to it. But if you're going to kill one, it better be your own. They're expensive.

Democracy was a radical idea in that time. The seed of Democracy was planted in 1776, and it's met resistance all the way along. 1954 was a particularly difficult time. The white government was called to protect the black people from the white people. It was one of them what's-wrong-with-this-picture moments. It had always been the other way around, and still is. It didn't change. A couple hundred years of Democracy got Martin Luther King killed. We're creeping along. It's a struggle all the way. This was the original country of respect for the working man. What a laugh that is now.

It used to be that Democracy was a white thing. Now it's a mixed race thang. The squeals of Limbaugh and Robertson are consistent with the end of white man rule. A giant leap for Democracy. White men no longer own 51% of the stock. White people are having less kids and mating with people of all colors. Our president jumped on the ball and got help headed to helpless people without a pause. Racism as policy is over. It gives the impression our man at the top sees all the way to the bottom of the ladder. Lincoln comes to mind as another president who might have seen to the bottom of the ladder. Kennedy possibly. Not much life expectancy in it.

It's a tough one to get the mind around, the immensity of the complications involved in shoring up people who have only known the worst poverty. Whatever relief gets started on its way soon after the quake, it's going to take hours and days to get there. How could they rebuild the city where the houses made of stacked blocks all fell down? News I heard today is a great number of survivors are heading for the mountains. The people in the cities initially got there from the countryside to find work and make some money. Just as well go back. The port is wrecked. That will be one of the priorities to fix soon as possible.

So far, according to news I heard today, the Haitian government has made no efforts at any kind of help. I've an idea the Haitian government was in Port au Prince and hit just as hard as everyone else. Actually, I didn't even know Haiti had a functioning government. They have dictators who drain the country of its resources and leave after a coup. It seems like the Haitian government's role has always been to take from the people and give nothing in return. By now the Haitian population is like the landscape, down to nothing. No nutrients left.

Rich white preacher pronounces, You done it to yourselves. It's your fault you're poor. The black American president didn't even ask them if they believe in abortion. He set the wheels of help in motion. If this were my last day on earth, I'd be content that our beloved nation has taken another step toward Democracy, the real thing. Fine tuning Democracy seems to be as much the American Dream as wanting to be rich, entwined like the rose and the briar.

HAITI NEWS

photo: afp/getty images

Big earthquake at Port au Prince in Haiti. The poorest place in our hemisphere. The other hemisphere has Albania and Myanmar. Haiti is so easy to ignore, so easy not to think about, so easy not to hold our attention on the news. Poor people. Who notices the poor? Don't feed them and they'll go away. They have no taste, no valid sense of style. They're coarse and talk dirty. They're not famous. We don't see them on tv but in the backgrounds, except when a disaster strikes that's so bad you have to feel sorry for them, no matter who they are, black, talk French, more African than Africa, poverty like in Tanzania. We of the First World can't even conceive of this poor a people, so we don't think about it. Haiti is not up the ladder. Good Americans only look up the ladder.



It's looking like this drastic blow to people already stricken down and kept down as people can be and go on living, is another episode in Mr Bill of Saturday Night Live a long time ago. Mr Hand in one swipe demolishes Mr Bill, a figure made of toy clay, red, yellow and blue. Each week Mr Hand did in Mr Bill in a new way, like smashed him with a fist, squirted lighter fluid on him and set him on fire. Nutty stuff. It was the unexpected in the way Mr Hand offed Mr Bill that was funny about it. Haiti a nation with Mr Bill karma. No, Mr Hand!



The earthquake hit the dense population center. Haiti was as low as it could go, could sink no further. Armed gangs keep the population thinned and under control. Just last Saturday I saw a documentary, Ghosts of Cite Soleil. That's a Haitian city. The man who was the major thug was a rapper, went by Haitian 2Pac and killing people is what he did. In an interview with him he said no one grows old in Haiti. You die young. The ones killing people for varieties of reasons know their day is ahead. It's something of a game making it from one day to the next. Obesity is not an issue in Haiti.



200 years ago a slave rebellion killed and ran off the French colonialists from the island Hispanola. Haiti is on the western half of the island and Dominican Republic on the eastern half. It was in the time the islands of the Atlantic were burned out and largely sugar plantations replaced the vegetation. All the beautiful species of birds and monkeys, tropical flowers, pure water, everything living in harmony for how many thousands of years unnoticed by the human mind. When the human mind took an interest, that was it for beauty, for paradise. Like all the wild animals that live around us in these mountains seem to know among themselves that if a human sees you, you're the same as dead.



Haiti was a French colony and Dominican Republic was Spanish with some French plantation owners. The Haitian half of the island used up their trees and hurricanes washed the topsoil out to sea long ago. Everything was taken from the land and nothing returned to it. The slaves of Haiti killed and ran out the white plantation owners, like in Zimbabwe a few decades ago. 200 years of being ruled by dictators and their armies, no hope, no help, using the power of their guns to take everything of any value for themselves. Duvalier, Aristide? 2 sides of the same coin. The government and business community does not have the interest of the people in direst poverty on earth in their hearts.



Everything there built of cinderblocks and poor cement. Everything built like playing blocks. Stack up blocks as high as you can get them without them falling down. Then run your hand through it and knock it all down. Port au Prince fell down, down to the ground. Relief aid will be flown in and shipped in round the clock. This could make an interesting thing to watch and see what really happens. It could turn out to be something that needed to happen to change Haiti's track. It's like Haiti has reached a place where it is slowly shrinking and there's no further it can go into poverty. The extremes in their politics keeps the blood flowing down through time. It's not that it's bad so much as it is difficult. A country that is virtually ungovernable.



Now Haiti has caught the attention of the whole world. World Help organizations will be going in, governments, documentary film crews. Just a cigar boat ride to the eastern tip of Cuba where Gitmo looms. Haitians have jumped into the shark filled ocean for many years to get off the land there, take the chance of floating to Miami where they get put in the concentration camp for Haitians not allowed entry and not sent back. Diseases are next. Packs of hungry dogs. Gangs. A lot needs doing really fast. All of Port au Prince will need to be rebuilt. There are no resources for it. I'm curious to see how far the world community will go to help Haiti onto its feet.