A good question, given what I've put myself through physically. There are financial implications, the emotional hardship and many other factors that one could examine individually or as a whole.
It took me an instant to reply:
"I would do it again in a second."
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Today's plan was well-thought out and the timings down to the minute. Then everything changed. We had coordinated a set shipping point with the Beijing Red Cross which was also to be a rendezvous point with all of our suppliers. With so much to do today it would be physically impossible to meet everyone, pay for and collect goods, and ship.
So we had arranged for friends to pick thing up, for suppliers to meet us..everything that as right as rain, cool as cucumbers, dandy as pie...then the Red Cross told us that we need to ship from another spot. So we had to get to work again to make it happen.
And we did. Starting right after the crazy morning rush, we went directlly to the flagship Hello Kitty shop - I'm kidding. We first coordinated a dispatch system where everyone would call into one mobile with where they are and when they're arriving, with the idea that we would stagger the people coming to see us. And it actually worked. We spent several hours at the new shipping site, acting like a two-person FedEx (this shipment comes in and this one goes out).
By mid-afternoon, we had taken in and shipped out a massive amount of stuff (with a quick break for an amazing bowl of steaming hot animal innards, pic below), including enough tenting materials to shelter, I would say, 8,000 people. That, to me, is simply and profoundly amazing. Just that one fact, to me, would have made it worth swimming to Beijing :) Yesterday on TV, I saw crews in Wenchuan province opening huge bags of tenting materials, which could have very well been ours and it made me feel amazing - so proud of what everyone who has donated has done for the people affected by the Tragedy.
By the end of the afternoon, we had shipped an entire truckload of tenting materials, 1,000 shirts and more. And right now, as I finish this note, everything is on the way to Sichuan.
As we were dropping off the last of the load (we were parked in a very tight alley) I saw door that was slightly opened and inside, an Army guard, asleep. The picture I took and am posting is a lousy one, but I wanted it up because, as he was lying there, I was wondering what he was dreaming about. He was clearly taking his turn napping while doing shifts guarding all of the donations. Was he maybe from Sichuan? Had he, as had several people I had met over these days, lost people or property in the Tragedy? To me, this picture, of a hard-working guard probably passed out from exhaustion was just very visceral.
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Beijing is OBSESSED with Hello Kitty. Not since Tokyo, where Hello Kitty borders on out of control fetishism (great - not you'll be able to find this post by Googling "hello kitty fetish", soooo, I might as well add the word "Satan" here just to put the cherry on top of the sundae) have I seen a city where not only Sanrio's ubiquitous Hello Kitty reigns supreme, but anything at all to do with kittens.
Just mumble the words "new kitten," and you'll have women all over you as if you were Kobe beef and they were sumo wrestlers. Of course, all of the women who run to you will be decked in in all of their Hello Kitty gear, which then takes a certain amount of restraint to not run in front of a bus. And there's this great innocence in, you know, 31-year-old women just losing their MINDS over a fictitious drawing of a kitten or the real thing.
I wonder if Beijing men do the math: "I can get women to date me by buying nice clothes, a decent suit, getting a good haircut, maybe buying dinner when we go out...OR...I can just get a kitten out of the dumpster."
So, if the whole Hello Kitty aspect of Beijing isn't sufficiently cloying for you, let me tell you about this city's (and, let's be honest, almost ALL of Asia's) obsession with SWEET drinks.
I've had sweet drinks. No one can say that Sprite isn't sweet. Or juice drinks. Or, I don't know, a melted freeze pop. But here, you can find drinks that completely rocket "sweet" into an otherworldly concept.
Take the innocent iced tea. Sure, you can get it with sugar in North America. And in the southern US, the sweet tea is sweeter than normal. But if those are 3 or 4 on the 1 to 10 scale of sweet, the iced tea here can be a 37. I had a sip, yesterday, of an innocent looking iced tea. It was a normal colour, no loose sugar floating around. Normal. Then I took a sip and had to really force to swallow it as the gag reflex was winning for a few seconds there. It was a glass of pure, I don't know, liquid sugar, I guess.
They also have these very trendy sweet shops frequented by mostly but not exclusively young people. There, you can find the highest caloric content in the world packed into the least volume of liquid. These drinks border on the flourescent, the glass vessel almost unable to contain the color of sweet. One sip of these icy, milk-shake-sized devils and you will be sugar-fueled to run a marathon. Uphill.
If the drink isn't enough for you, hop on over to one of the city's many haunts for "cute" cakes. I have counted ninety-three cakes in the shape and cuteness of a fuzzy bunny. Like Hello Kitty, they are pink and white. They just perspire cute. And happy. And cute and happy. And cute. And, yes, happy.
I have not dared taste one of these cakes, as my sip of iced tea has already filled my sucrose content for 2008, but they just make my eyes water and pancreas start to work the night shift. I sense that they taste of sunshine and ecstatic. With maybe a hint of delerious and a pinch of wow.
But the thing that drives all of this, here and places such as Hong Kong, Tokyo Seoul, is this massive sense of innocence in the whole enterprise. It's a return to simpler times, when 30-year-olds can be six again and six-year-old can be, well, five. In a culture where the average person really doesn't drink alcohol (I'm not saying that noone drinks - business drinking is huge here but it's not the norm for the average person to relax with a few drinks at home) this is an attachment that has become an important cultural recreation.
And it's just so darn cute. And pink.
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Today - literally today - it is estimated that there are thousands of people who have come to the city from Sichuan since 12th May. Not all are refugees, some were anticipatory evacuees - families who had the means to send their child or one or both parents and the child away from Sichuan (probably Chengdu) to friend or relatives in Beijing. And they've begun lives here, temporary or perhaps permanent ones.
It's important to remember that the mentality in the province, even in Chengdu, where the damage was not, comparatively, bad, is one of waiting, minute by minute, for the next movement of the earth.
This morning I thought of post-traumatic stress. Not in the context of nuclear families affected by the Tragedy, but those who escaped relatively unscathed. I've read that there are huge issues of guilt, worthiness to have survived, sleeplessness, ongoing fear of the future and much more that needs to be addressed. Yet, the mental health system is overtaxed and may not be able to accomodate such families for a long time. So, there is a further anticipated exodus of this population to cities most probably outside of the province which, of course, will have long-term negative effects for Sichuan.
Looking back on the events of the past week, the one that that stands out to me as stunning was China's immediate rescue response. 220 MINUTES after the earthquake struck, there were rescue troops in the air and on the ground. This is not only world-class but truly mind-boggling.
Today we coordinated all of the complicated timings for tomorrow and purchased around 15 cases of what I discussed in too much detail yesterday.
Also today, Hu Jintao visited Wenchuan County, Sichuan, and addressed a class at a school. He wrote several lines on a chalkboard:
All to help
Rely on ourselves
Work hard
That really sums up the positive attitude here in a very powerful way.
Also, in a very nice touch today, Dr. Allam, Egypt's Ambassador to China, came to Sichuan just to meet with newly-orphaned kids. And he brought gifts, which was cool, and spent a LOT of time with the kids, which was even cooler.
I am sure that for the people in China today who have been displaced by the earthquake, just as is and was the case for people fleeing war and persecution anywhere in the world, an element of divine intervention exists in their ability to survive and find a safe place. For today's refugees from Sichuan, the following passage from Exodus rings true;
"The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire." - Exodus, 13. 21
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So, what's in the news here is that the aftershocks have created a very dangerous dam. If they can't move this displaced earth, a million people will be in jeopardy. It's being refered to on CNN as "Quake Lake," because, evidently, descriptions such as mine, above, aren't good enough. I'm expecting CNN, at any moment now, to come up with a great overall handle for what has happened. Something classy like "Sichuan Shakeup" (though they would misspell it "Szechuan," like the General Tsao's Chicken they get on 44th and Lexington). Or maybe "Rumble in the Jungle," playing on the handle of the great Ali prize fight of 30-ish years ago, though, clearly, Sichuan province isn't a jungle (but many CNN viewers couldn't find China, let alone Sichuan, on a map). Keep in mind that this is the same network that, tonight, called the story of the astronauts fixing their toilets "All Systems Go." I'm SO not lying - just saw it.
Later, at about 2am, I saw a CNN story that focused on foreign doctors coming to help in China. Now, before you start flipping out in my direction, let me state for the record that I completely adore Medecins Sans Frontieres. Amazing group. But that wasn't the focus of this story. It was on a few US doctors walking around makeshift mobile hospitals waving at little kids hooked up to IVs. No mention at all of the THOUSANDS of Chinese doctors who've temporarily given up their sources of revenue (and Chinese doctors may make one-onehundreth of an established US doctor) to help in Sichuan.
Remarkably frustrating. Listen, it's great when any doctor makes the trip to help anywhere in the world. Good on ya. But, really, I'm watching CNN in Beijing and, at the same time, hundreds of millions of others are watching the same news story. How many of them are equipped with filters strong enough to realize that just because it's on TV (especially CNN, "the world's most respected news source") doesn't mean that it's the definitive version of the truth. Or reality.
And then, as the night progresses and I return to Chinese TV, I began to see an intelligent pattern emerge in the work. It was very proactive - not at all haphazard. The rescue and cleanup effort here has been remarkable as, I'm sure, the rebuilding effort will be. This has been the anti-Katrina, with regional and central planning setting a clear path for the effort from day one.
It's as if those in charge reviewed their notes on Sun Tzu before they acted: "With careful and detailed planning, one can win; with careless and less detailed planning, one cannot win. How much more certain is defeat if one does not plan at all! From the way planning is done beforehand, we can predict victory or defeat." Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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