Death and Taxes
Mr. Wang was looking intently the screensaver, which I thought a little odd. It was an image of “Beautiful Beichuan” viewed from the surrounding hills. Perhaps a little super saturated to heighten the impact of what was clearly a tourist promotional image, but as Mr Wang was on the Beichuan Mayor’s staff, the choice of image was understandable. What made the scene more poignant is that the Beichuan mayor’s “office” is a tent in Anxian, a totally different county, and the city of Beichuan no longer exists. Mr. Wang showed us pictures of the city as it is now, and skewed buildings and reconfigured hills tell the earthquake story all too graphically. Mr. Wang and the rest of the staff seemed to be going about their work rather mechanically with no particular haste, but then it was Sunday afternoon. They had time and seemed willing for us to view the images from their files. Image after gruesome image rolled across the screen. When we finished watching the slide “show”, Mr. Wang showed us a seven minute presentation of the disaster’s impact on the city. The story line was simple and brought together a propaganda video of happy villagers dancing in a tourist paradise with footage of the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. If that were not enough, the presentation concluded with a contrast between the easy laughter of a schools sports day at the local high school on the 11th, with scenes of overwhelming grief of the same school only one day later. I found it hard to watch but felt I owed to our hosts not to turn away from the affecting images.
In time, my colleagues moved on to business and the minutiae of relief work, all attended to, to this observer’s impression, with frankness and efficiency. I tuned in and out of the conversation as the general direction was obvious, and my role in proceedings marginal. At one of the points of being tuned in, I thought I misheard, because our hosts were saying that all three men who were talking to us had lost their wives, and in one man’s case, his child also. Even though Mr Wang, by comparison, seemed lucky; his son was still alive, his rather disconnected manner took on a new perspective as he explained that he had not seen his child for a month. Somehow the picture of father and son being unable to grieve together seemed more intolerable that of the initial loss. I asked the three men to write the names of those they had lost, and promised to pray for them then next day. Perhaps a futile gestures to make towards communist cadres, but ideological differences did not seem to matter and they at least did not object to the offer.
Later in the course of a long day in resettlement camps of various kinds we finally turned into the yard of a wrecked factory. The tents design suggested “government” and the camp had an air of quiet efficiency. I thought we were being introduced to another command centre but in fact the reality was slightly different. We were in the Beichuan’s tax bureau office. Here the trauma of our hosts was even more palpable. Two thirds of the staff died at their desks and, because a government post also includes housing, all the rest had lost family members in the landslide that covered their residential compound. We began to talk, one professional to another, of our plans for counselling “ordinary people” who were grieving. Too my complete surprise, our host, with uncharacteristic directness, said that they too needed this kind of counselling and asked we include them in our plans. The very un-Chinese approach touched me very much and helped me to realise the dept of suffering these people have gone through. It made me ever more anxious to contribute to the recovery of mind as well as body of the people of Beichuan.
It struck me that these men had no words to talk about their loss, at least not as those with Faith might do. Slogans like “Uniting to build a better Beichuan” or “Come on Beichuan” (two of the current favourites) might get warm (and sincere) appreciation at the meetings of the collective, but does nothing to address the personal losses of individual people. As believers, we have words, which we use too easily perhaps sometimes, about Resurrection and Heaven, or a personal favourite “He/She is no farther from us than God and God is very near.” The government memorial services are very solemn and moving even, but they are memorial services, they speak of the past, they have nothing to say about the future. One can talk out the grief though faith’s comforting promises and confident mapping of the world beyond. Chinese cadres, officially at least, have no such consolation. Such stories, from whatever source, are superstition only. There are no words, no comforting images of where their loved ones are now. I wish I could share my words with them, or that we held stories in common, but we don’t. One can only remember them in pray for them and ask God to weave stories from those prayers that give these grieving men some peace. It may sound limp perhaps, but I believe it is better that staring at images of supersaturated Beichuan, which is no more.