Monday was a beautiful day in Xiamen; low humidity, bright sunshine and a perfect day for running the Olympic Torch through town which in a town of almost two million is a pretty big deal. Most classes were cancelled since while the administration didn’t sanction it, many of the kids had arranged to go see the torch somewhere along the route. Every body was pretty happy when the foreign teachers did what many of the Chinese teachers had done.
It would be silly to tell your grandchildren that you sat on your butt in some silly class when the Olympic Torch was making its way through town on a beautiful day.
Busses, the principal means of transportation in these parts were packed and finally stopped running by noon when the roads into Xiamen Island were closed. The run hit the peak areas of town about 2:30 and was televised on local stations. Nobody felt a thing.
I’m not sure what geological structures prevented the coast here from feeling the earthquake in Sichuan Province when it was felt in Taiwan, Hanoi, Tokyo and Beijing, but no one I know sensed anything.
You’ve probably followed the news………they’re still trying to get to many areas since the weather was terrible in the aftermath and most of the roads and bridges are out. The numbers keep going up and many kids here are affected. I know two in particular who are from the area directly involved and they report that their families are safe, but that their towns and everything they had there is destroyed. Of course a college student from those parts knows the local schools pretty well, so they’re having a hard time of it.
For the CNN/Jack Cafferty fans, the local media is covering all the details in real-time as is the Beijing media………good and bad, warts and all. It makes that business with Katrina look like the efforts of a third world country. I wonder if Cafferty has commented on that yet.
The College is doing what it can and has asked the teachers to check with students who are affected and is taking up the usual collections for aid agencies. Nothing you wouldn’t see anywhere else. All the kids are using their phone networks and the Internet to keep in touch and they’ve asked the school to keep the Internet in their dorms up after 11 PM — it’s practice here to turn it off at 11 so kids aren’t up all night playing online games or chatting with each other.
All is well in Xiamen, but its a terrible time for China.
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