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Inside a camp for earthquake victims in Sichuan
This article is by Pete Sweeney, a Fulbright Scholar researching business policy in Chengdu, China.
The image is by Beijing-based photographer Janek Zdzarski who is currently traveling around the earthquake zone
Jiao Na had come a long way to help the people of Sichuan. A Chinese teacher living in Kunming, she had seen the pictures and heard the cries for help. Not content to mail supplies, she contacted a local health bureau in Chengdu and arranged to purchase the supplies they said they needed to prevent a looming medical disaster: medical supplies, mosquito repellent, dry biscuits. She solicited donations from her friends in Kunming, some $700 worth, and booked plane tickets along with several companions.
However, when she got to Chengdu, she was astonished to find that nobody seemed to want the aid they’d requested. She made two stops, one at the Chinese Red Cross, and had her goods turned away for being too small in scale. When she met us at the Sichuan Provincial Hygiene Information Research Center, another collecting point for aid, she was tired of rejections. And yet the center appeared unexcited about her donations. Her receipts were not in order. They didn’t want to deal with foodstuffs or mosquito repellent. They suggested she go deliver it to the distressed regions herself, but the roads are closed to individual volunteers and she has no car anyway. “I d ...
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Inside a camp for earthquake victims in Sichuan
This article is by Pete Sweeney, a Fulbright Scholar researching business policy in Chengdu, China.
The image is by Beijing-based photographer Janek Zdzarski who is currently traveling around the earthquake zone
Jiao Na had come a long way to help the people of Sichuan. A Chinese teacher living in Kunming, she had seen the pictures and heard the cries for help. Not content to mail supplies, she contacted a local health bureau in Chengdu and arranged to purchase the supplies they said they needed to prevent a looming medical disaster: medical supplies, mosquito repellent, dry biscuits. She solicited donations from her friends in Kunming, some $700 worth, and booked plane tickets along with several companions.
However, when she got to Chengdu, she was astonished to find that nobody seemed to want the aid they’d requested. She made two stops, one at the Chinese Red Cross, and had her goods turned away for being too small in scale. When she met us at the Sichuan Provincial Hygiene Information Research Center, another collecting point for aid, she was tired of rejections. And yet the center appeared unexcited about her donations. Her receipts were not in order. They didn’t want to deal with foodstuffs or mosquito repellent. They suggested she go deliver it to the distressed regions herself, but the roads are closed to individual volunteers and she has no car anyway. “I d ...