'A Grim, Uncertain Future'

BEICHUAN, China – From a distance, little has changed at Beichuan Middle School in the six months since it collapsed onto itself, burying and killing 1,000 students and teachers.

A steady stream of people steps around and over mounds of broken and smashed concrete intertwined with twisted steel beams that stand in a massive pile of rubble in front of the hollow remnants of the lone, barely standing building. Yet up close, foot paths are well-worn over the giant hill of debris under which locals say hundreds of children remain buried. Memorials to those who died in the May 12 earthquake are faded from summer sun and a September flood.

Today’s scattered groups of people are not the exhausted rescue workers or hyper-motivated young volunteers of May, but tourists posing for photos. One group of young and middle-aged women in party dresses and heavy makeup teeter on high heels across the field of debris to pose for pictures as men in sport coats gesture and discuss the collapsed building.

Disaster tourism has come to Beichuan, the county worst-hit by the Sichuan earthquake. Locals don’t mind the stream of incoming gawkers and have built a small economy around them. At an overlook to the old, abandoned city of Beichuan, now closed off by a high fence and razor wire, dozens of hawkers sell earthquake photos maps pointing to landmarks made famous by Chinese television coverage of the dramatic destruction.

 “I think it’s okay because maybe they’ll do something to help out,” said Fu Zelin, a 25-year-old engineering student whose family remains homeless in Beichuan with winter fast approaching.

Fu’s parents and 90-year-old grandfather sleep in tents and cook under a tarp shelter on the foundation of their ruined home at the entrance to the decimated middle school. Their farmland was destroyed or taken for temporary housing, so their only income now comes from selling fruit and water to passing tourists.

One tourist from nearby Mianyang said she comes here often, trying to bring clothes and other items for survivors and friends to educate about the earthquake. The little boom is not making anyone rich or reaching most survivors, however. And it won’t help Fu’s family raise the needed $30,000 to rebuild their farmhouses.

Away from Beichuan, the city’s former residents speak of not having enough warm clothes to make it through winter. At one temporary village, a massive metal barracks for 7,000 of Beichuan’s former residents, earthquake survivors worry about staying warm through the winter. Their small dorm-style homes with leaky roofs are unheated and they have no idea when or how their permanent homes will be rebuilt. The government has said it will take two to three years to rebuild the area and Beichuan will be moved entirely.

Most of the soldiers who helped in the weeks after the devastating quake that killed more than 80,000 people in the region are gone. Residents say the army left this summer before the Olympics. Volunteers are few and far between. While aid groups are helping to rebuild as they undertake counseling and education programs around the region, there is an overwhelming sense from survivors of a grim, uncertain future.

“Before, the volunteers and soldiers were so helpful,” said a 64-year-old woman who lost two grandchildren to collapsed buildings in Beichuan. “Now we’re all alone and there is no one helping us.”

In recent weeks, the central government has announced new economic aid for the Sichuan earthquake region, including extending credit and cash for rebuilding infrastructure. In addition, the 4 trillion yuan economic stimulus package unveiled Nov. 9 dedicates significant funding to repairing disaster-stricken areas like this. But already, complaints of corruption, graft and missing disaster funds are common throughout patches of the earthquake zone.

Construction crews toil on brick buildings throughout the region, struggling to re-home thousands of survivors before the snows fly. Yet disorganization seems to rule—some farmers took loans to rebuild, others were given bricks by the government of Shandong Province, which agreed to assist the Beichuan area. Earthquake survivors lack clear knowledge of what kind of assistance they should get and how to get it and local corruption could be a tough hurdle to successful reconstruction.

Outside Anxian, as a farm family sinks a well for their new home, a crowd of neighbors gathers to criticize the lack of consistent local action in dealing with earthquake reconstruction. In some places, good will over help just after the earthquake has given way to anger.

“The central government policy is really good but the local officials have done a bad job and the money isn’t going where it should,” said Li Xiangxin. “The money that was supposed to be ours has been spent by the local government elsewhere.”

“Money is not the most important thing,” said Li. “The point is local corruption.”

Kathleen McLaughlin has been a journalist in China for more than seven years and has covered regional issues including economics, the environment and governmental regulation.