Among the Ruins of Old Beichuan
Away from the noise and pollution of China’s larger cities, the ghost town of Old Beichuan is surrounded by green forest-covered hills. Tucked below in the valley, tilted buildings and piles of crumbled brick covered by weeds and vine sit just as they had once fallen.
This place, though in ruins, is not ancient—it is a modern-day rural town devasted in an earthquake in China’s Sichuan province. Known as the Wenchuan earthquake, this massive 8.0 quake shook the earth for two terrifying minutes on May 12, 2008. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, many thousands more were injured and displaced. Recovery efforts in the days and months following rescued survivors and rebuilt cities. It is with some surprise then, that in early October 2017, I found myself standing among the earthquake ruins. Officially called “The Earthquake Ruins Old Beichuan,” the wreckage was left by the Chinese government as part of a larger memorial of the earthquake. The surviving residents were resettled on new land a half-hour away, and the town given the same name.
Present day Beichuan is a replica of an ancient town with cheap stone façade lining a pedestrian main thoroughfare where sellers offer all kinds of kitsch, typical of tourist sites throughout mainland China. Before visiting the memorial, I strolled through kitsch town.
Dozens of stalls offered street food, and children buzzed around as loud music blared from multiple shops. I stopped to notice cloth bags stamped with a cute panda on the outside. Below the Panda were the English words, “Shit Sugar.” This Chinglish phrase was probably crafted by someone wanting to use English for good measure. Afterall, 食糖 （Shí táng）is one way to translate “sugar,” so I sort of understood how “shit” was derived. Native English speakers in China grow accustomed to Chinglish and the (mis)use of vulgar words.
Several hours later, I said “oh shit” in earnest, but out of horror rather than humor. The Earthquake Ruins of Old Beichuan bring the visitor back in time to the disaster itself. Paths have been maintained for tourists to walk through Old Beichuan’s crumbled, tilted, and destroyed buildings. Signs posted in front of notable buildings give the details in multiple languages of how many people had occupied them, how many had died, and a story from the aftermath.
A sign notes that forty-seven perished in what had been the rural credit cooperative association, including all the managers above mid-level. Furthermore, it reveals, the army worked for 9 days and 8 nights straight to recover 6.4 million yuan in cash (nearly 1 million USD).
There wasn’t much noise here, as I noticed the crunch of gravel underfoot. Something else caught my eye—the remnants of what had been an apartment building. One section stood with the help of large metal rods as props. Beside it, empty space and piles of rubble, with another section that had fallen and turned on its side. The outer walls had crumbled, exposing a squat toilet and tile that had been a bathroom. No sign indicated what fate the apartment’s human inhabitants suffered.
Several days prior, an earthquake jolted the region. At the time, I taught English at Mianyang Teacher’s College in Mianyang, the Sichuan province’s second largest city. Mianyang was also devastated in the Wenchuan earthquake, including a number of the college’s buildings.
This recent quake was minor, only lasting a couple of seconds. I had been in the classroom showing a film for a make-up class in advance of a major holiday (Yes, we had an extra class on Saturday, mandated by the government to “make up” for the day off the next week). The desks and chairs rattled as the building swayed and ceiling tiles bobbed up and down. I may or may not have muttered “oh shit!” under my breath. Many of my students are survivors of the 2008 earthquake and would’ve been 9 or 10 years old at the time. The two-second shake jolted our adrenaline and jogged their memories—and trauma—from a decade earlier.
In Old Beichuan an entire middle school was buried under a landslide of rocks from the side of a mountain. Those children didn’t have a chance, but in the months after the earthquake, it became apparent many children perished around the province in school buildings that had been poorly constructed. Corners were cut, profits made, and subsequently thousands of children died.
In the quake’s aftermath, now exiled dissident artist Ai Weiwei started digging around, asking for names of the dead children. In 2009 he used 9,000 backpacks in an art installation in Germany. He was later beaten and imprisoned; his exile stems in part from his insistence upon getting answers from the government on deaths resulting from shoddy construction practices.
With tears in my eyes and knot in my stomach, I read the sign that overlooks a rocky slope of the mountain. All that remains of Old Beichuan’s middle school is a basketball hoop and a Chinese flag. The sign attempts to memorialize the children: “In the blink of an eye, the whole school was turned to ruins, and the beautiful campus and the children’s reading sound have disappeared.” A touching tribute, but I seethed with anger. Did the government work as hard to recover and honor all the dead children of Sichuan as they worked to recover the millions of yuan buried in a bank?
The old ruins are like inner anguish that lingers long beyond restored outward physical façades. Perhaps there are dead still buried beneath the twisted mess of brick, rebar, and stone at Old Beichuan. It was hard to summon words among the ruins, but I said a simple prayer for them: “O Lord, have mercy.”
Peppered throughout history are massive earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and many more natural disasters. Lives are destroyed in an instant, but the human spirit strives on, and I see it in my students. They emerged from the rubble and overcame their memories. These kids are growing up in a China with more opportunity and upward mobility than any previous generation. They dream of graduating from college and making a better life for themselves and their families. May it be so and may their foundations withstand life’s turbulence and shaking.
