*posted by Amy*
Taoping 12-July
Today, breakfast and then off for a hike. We got our gear ready last night, and got to sleep nice and early. We got started on the hike around 8:30 and the trail didn’t waste any time going up. People had very little time to get warmed up, and they were already sucking wind. The trail continued its ascent, and we moved at a slow pace. There was around fifty of us, and so that caused some spreading out along the trail. A group of younger students set the pace, and with them was Jeff Hou and one of the TA’s, Jewel. Josh, Yue, and I moved along the group to make sure people were doing well, staying hydrated, things like that. It was a slow slog up, as some people were not in hiking shape, and we are about a mile up to start. The trail was exposed, and this morning was the first morning we had some sun. We were able to get some great photos over the valley of Taoping and the Zagunao River.
The trek carried us up to some other villages, and no surprise, the 5.12 damage was catastrophic. Whole villages were laid to waste. I am constantly amazed in the indefatigable spirit of mankind. The first village we came to was utterly destroyed and day to day life continues. There was a funeral happening. I don’t know if I could handle even trying to pick up the pieces, the flee response becomes so overwhelming. We also walk through these towns and see the same construction techniques being used that were on the receiving end of so much damage, and the Government tells the villagers to rebuild using “traditional techniques.” One of the students in our group is a civil engineer, and she has said several times over the construction practices cause her to feel ill. The workers make minor changes, using cement mortar instead of the traditional mud mortar, but in some of the construction we don’t see and steel reinforcement. It almost seems as if they forget they live in a seismically active area, or have chosen to ignore this notion entirely. And as far as repairing the historical structures, the villages we saw today looked beyond help.
Our trek made it to a ridge line, and we moved east along to the next village. This was the turn-around point, and the site of the tombs Professor Li Wei had mentioned yesterday. Yesterday we were told of these tombs and heavy rock slabs that covered the fronts. The story was no one knew how these heavy slabs made it up here, and they were from a race of people that were defeated by the Qiang people. I want to say that this was one of the largest let-downs of my life. The “slabs” were thin rock, maybe 2 foot squares each. Don’t get me wrong, rock is heavy, but when you say you don’t know how a heavy rock. I tried to imagine how these were actually discovered as tombs, they were so tiny. I’m not trying to take away from the credence of anyone’s anthropological research, but these “tombs” were not very impressive.
At this point the slog had gone on for far too long, and Josh Marijean, and myself, we decided to head back to town. The return trip ended up taking about 45 minutes, and we were back just in time to catch the end of lunch, and a quick nap. We then had a short round up to talk about a presentation of the inventory of our studies that we will give tomorrow. At this point, the groups will be redistributed, and we will prepare solutions from here out. It is amusing, the syllabus and tentative schedule had us working on research to use for a studio next fall at UW, but it looks like we will e producing document ts on the trip. So not what I was expecting, but pretty cool, that we may be able to influence the local point of view, hopefully.
I should mention at this point, J-Bo has moved to another guest house in town, so now Josh and I are sharing a room that is ten by ten. This may not seem like much, but by now, after the water system crapping out on us three or four times, I feel like we are in the f-ing Hyatt. Dinner was no different then any other, not bad, just nothing to write home about, except I am writing about it. But we had a Goat roast afterwards. On the way to dinner, we had seen two of the men of the family slaughtering the goat that would be turned into our feast. I say feast, but it was more like an hors d’oeuvre. The goat holds cultural significance for the Qiang people. It is one of the few animals they raise as livestock, has carried there people through hardship, and has also destroyed the Qiang people’s religious scriptures. I don’t know if this is true or fiction, but makes for good stories.
The goat roast was a hoot. There was dancing and eating and then the singing started. Our hosts started by singing some Qiang folk songs, then the Chinese students kicked in, and then J-Bo and I gave a stunning rendition of L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole. It was pretty funny and we got a lot of laughs out of it. After lots of laughs and more singing for our hosts, we called it a night, except as I type, the Chinese students are working away on their presentations. Josh was joking with me that they consider me a TA by proximity. After about an hour of chatting, one of the students came over and asked me to check out their work. It was an outline for our presentation, and it looked good, but from their voices, they sounded as if they may work long into the night. Don’t get me wrong, I have pulled all nighters, even recently, but not for a 3 minute power point presentation. We’ll see what they have accomplished by tomorrow morning. I can only imagine what it will look like.
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