Life in the limelight

A student of mine asked me for Playboy magazine in class today. He said that since it’s banned in China, maybe I have some male friends that wouldn’t mind sending it to him. “You know, I’ve heard there are lots of pictures and a lot of really good English articles in it.” I got his hopes up falsely, I told him perhaps. Fat chance buddy! “Perhaps” and “maybe” mean no to most Chinese people, you would think that he would have gotten that.

I must have been really out of it in class today because 3 different students asked me if I was okay and I totally passed out in the office sleeping for a good 30 minutes after the first class. The typist said she saw me on TV at the Red Cross donating stuff to give to the earthquake victims. So now, I’ve been on TV, radio, and the newspaper. I get a lot of media coverage here.

I had dinner with Governor Chet Culver tonight and his buddies and the vice governor of Hebei province. We met at 5:30 at my campus and didn’t have dinner until 7:30 and everyone left at 8:30 pm. We talked with Governor Chet for a few minutes and had our pictures taken. I don’t know which newspaper that will appear in, but we were told it would appear in some paper. I don’t know if that means in Iowa or in Hebei. After dinner, we all went to DQ for ice cream. He’ll be in China for a week total, spending a day in Shanghai, two in Hong Kong and he was in Beijing for three. He will be in Shijiazhuang for a total of maybe 12 hours. Shijiazhuang is Des Moines’ sister city and he’s spending the least amount of time here.

Moment of silence

We had 3 minutes of silence at 2:28 pm. It was strange and surreal. The traffic stopped where it was in the street and horns blared for 3 minutes straight. I watched out my window. I noticed one person on a bike who stopped. There were a few people who kept walking. After it was over, the wind started blowing again in the trees and traffic went on as usual.

Earthquakes abound!

So around 2:30 pm today, I was beginning my class as usual and found that several of my students were really fixated on the lights in my classroom. I thought maybe there was a bee or a spider up there. I looked up in confusion and asked them what they were looking at and noticed they were swaying back and forth. Then I felt the ground move a little bit. Half of my class freaked out and said, “Earthquake! Earthquake!” and then I noticed people leaving the classrooms. Then one guy who took pity on my general state of confusion as a foreigner said, “EARTHQUAKE!!!!” in the doorway of my class and said we all had to leave. It was the most dramatic thing ever. My students got their stuff and we all went outside and waited for half an hour. I thought somebody would make an announcement that it was ok to go back inside but nobody did.

So some of my students and I led the way back into the building and the other students slowly trickled back into their classes as well. We started class again and my last student came in and said where the epicenter was in Chinese and some of my other students frantically got out their phones to call home because their homes are somewhat near the area. It was located in Sichuan province and it registered somewhere around a 7.5 on the Richter scale. The famous earthquake that happened in Tang Shan 30 years ago registered nearly the same and that killed almost 300,000 people. I have several other friends in Kunming and Chongqing that were a lot closer to the earthquake and probably felt the effects a lot more. An early report said an elementary school collapsed and that 4 children died and that 100 students were injured in Chongqing. The epicenter as far as I can tell is closest to the city of Chengdu which is way down south and not at all near where I live.

Later I found out that there was a smaller tremor in Beijing that was about 3.9 on the Richter scale. So I'm not sure which one I felt.