The earthquake

I meant to write about the earthquake earlier but then I was sidetracked by the new Chinese visa laws which nearly threatened to send me back to Canada to get the next step of my Visa. Luckily, Munny found a company in Hong Kong that could do it for me there. It was called CTS and it was located right in the airport which made it very convenient. It only took one working day.

Now that I am settled in again in Taixing I was looking through some of my photos and I found these two photos taken at my factory. The first one is of the Chinese national flag at half mast which has happened very rarely in China. As in only twice in the last four decades. This is to honour the people that died in the earthquake.



The second photo is of all of the office workers in my plant joining into a national moment of silence for the victims of the earthquake. It was very impressive to see how quickly the Chinese government jumped into action to help the victims. It was also very impressive how much the Chinese people gave to help the victims. everywhere you went for the weeks following the earthquake there were volunteers collecting for the victims, and people were giving. I read some crazy things on the net about how the Chinese government doesn't really care about its people but I have to say that they much more impressive than other governments have been in helping their people when a natural disaster struck.



On a side note it is pretty crazy how low the building standards are here. If an earthquake was to hit my little city of Taixing, I know that my brand new building would crumble like a cookie. In fact, one mean game of hop scotch may do it. But when I bring this up with the locals they say, "Yes, it would crumble like a cookie but we are not near a fault line!"