Quest for Innocence

AMB, 6 seconds of sounds of big heavy truck passing by near Yongxing Banfang.

ZX:
Two hours north of Sichuan’s capital of Chengdu is the city of Mianyang, home to the Yongxing settlement camp. The camp is located at a large construction site and opposite to new apartment buildings. With the surrounding roads also under construction, the only indication of an entrance to the camp is a few large mounds of dirt.

AMB, 6 seconds and then maybe fade in
AMB, sounds of motorbikes and people chatting

ZX:
The camp’s inhabitants used to be the residents of Beichuan, a once beautiful mountain town of twenty thousand people. With the town almost completely destroyed by the quake, the four thousand survivors have to live in camp’s pre-fabricated houses, which are hot and humid during the day. Shirtless men play Chinese checkers under the shade cloth. A few people sit and chat around two shoe-repairing stalls at an intersection.

AMB, 4 seconds of the shoe-fixing thing

ZX:
And their talk is mostly about the earthquake.

AMB, 6 seconds of people chatting about the earthquake

ZX: A bit further down the camp’s concrete road, the conversation is less peaceful.

AMB, 6’’, sounds of people fighting.

ZX:
Retired factory worker Qiu Daquan says he understands when people around here easily lose their temper, because many of them have lost family members in last year’s earthquake. He understands, because he lost his daughter and his wife.

Qiu Daquan:
I really miss my daughter, how can I not miss her? But there is nothing I can do. She was eighteen when the earthquake happened. She came back on Saturday afternoon. Her mother bought her some new clothes, and she went to school wearing her new clothes.

ZX:
And Mr. Qiu says he often gets flashbacks of the earthquake.

Qiu Daquan
When I walk the stairs, I feel nervous and tend to talk to myself, oh, I hope there is not going to be another earthquake. I am scared. And once when I walked downstairs, my legs shivered. Sometimes when I think about the earthquake and feel really scared, especially when I think about buildings collapsing.

ZX:
Flashbacks of tragic events is one of the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Psychologists say that traumatic experiences such as an earthquake, often cause survivors to suffer from anxiety, insomnia, depression, anger and relationship problems. If the symptoms continue after a month, that person is suffering from PTSD. American psychologist Rob Blinn says people who have experienced trauma in the past can be even more vulnerable to PTSD.

Rob Blinn:
If you have been through the Cultural Revolution or maybe you had parents beat you or something like that, you know all of these horrible things happen to you throughout your lifetime, it’s probably going to be much more severe than a single incident.

ZX:
Fifty nine year old Li Zixi says he’s been through all kinds of disasters in his lifetime. He tells me he lost his elder daughter and his property during the earthquake. Before the disaster his family could live well enough by renting out their house and running a grocery store. But now the combined income of he and his wife has been reduced to 90 US dollars a month and they have to support their younger daughter who is attending university.

Li Zixi
I don’t have any house, no property, no income, what can I do in the future? Who knows? I stay up late everyday because I can’t fall asleep. I only sleep about 3 hours a day.

ZX:
Li says his grandson was with him when the earthquake happened and he managed to pull both of them out of the rubble. But he is sad that his grandson doesn’t like to be with them anymore.

Li Zixi
He’s been living with his father for half a year and now our life style is different. His father has a job and they have their own house. They don’t live in this shabby resettlement camp. We used to be family, now they have left us.

ZX:
Talking about this brings tears to Mr. Li’s eyes. Li Zixi says his family has lived in Beichuan for generations, but he doesn’t want to go back there, because he finds it too heart-breaking.

At the other end of the settlement camp, speakers on the street play loudly. The song describes the beautiful nature of Sichuan.

AMB, this song….

The lyrics goes:
My lovely hometown, beautiful and peaceful Nuoergai; the Sun rises from here and the cloud and fog floats from here. My wonderful hometown, beautiful and peaceful Nuoergai, the river has brought you up, the clear lake reflects the blue sky…..

ZX:
And about two hundred meters away, as the sun goes down, people from different corners of the camp gathered together and started dancing in the little square.

AMB, sound of the music, 8’’, then fade in….

ZX:
The temperature is over 30 degrees Celsius, but this doesn’t seem to bother a group of about thirty women dancing. They hold hands while swinging their bodies to the music.

(Still with music)
ZX:
Among the small crowd watching the dance, several people are missing limbs. Some are fanning themselves with paper fans to keep cool. In the stalls nearby, people are selling cigarettes, vegetables, fruit, meat, barbecued food, and there is a pharmacy, a family planning office, a Communist Party’s committee office, legal advice center and health center, everything that a village would need.

ZX:
At around 9pm when I left, trucks continue carrying construction material on the bumpy road past the camp’s entrance. Next to the dirt mounds, an elderly couple burn paper money as an offering to the dead.

AMB, 4’’, sound of the fire

ZX:
None of the earthquake survivors I met raised the topic of trauma. When I ask if they have been affected psychologically by the earthquake, they say they are alright and that very few people are affected.

ZX:
Doctor Lin Hong from Peking University’s Institute of Mental Health has visited the earthquake zone to analyze the psychological support being offered there. She says she is disappointed with the results.

Lin Hong:
After the earthquake, many organizations, volunteers, all sorts of people went to the earthquake zones to conduct psychology-related work. We tried to find out how much of their work was applicable. And we realized that ordinary people were very unfamiliar with the topic of psychology. Their idea of psychology is filling out questionnaires. And we realized that our work was not very effective.

ZX:
Doctor Lin says their program involves helping local doctors recognize psychological and mental illness in their patients. She adds that a person’s headache, lack of appetite or stomach pain might actually be a result of psychological problems. She says it’s vital for local doctors to learn to communicate effectively to make patients feel comfortable in speaking with them.

Lin Hong:
We try to make the locals feel that we understand them, that we care about them and want to help.

ZX:
Jinag Ling is a young Beichuan woman who lost her child and mother during the earthquake. She says she’s been feeling supported by her counselor Mr. Liu Meng in Dujiangyan, not far from Chengdu. Ms. Jiang’s baby son died when he was only two months old and she said she’s gone through some really hard times.

Jiang Ling:
Those days from May to November 2008 are hard to describe. I don’t even realize how painful it was for me. My sprit was so low then. I could be laughing in the morning and crying in the afternoon, and I cried really hard. When I became exhausted from crying, I fell asleep. And when I woke up, I started crying again, because there was no one in my family who could be with me. I cried everyday by myself.

ZX:
Ms. Jiang also talked about how her pain also affected her other family members.

Jiang Ling:
From May up until November, I really hated my husband and my father. I kept asking them, why did you and my father live while my mother and son died? It was only after being treated by Mr. Liu that I realized I was wrong. Men don’t really cry in front of you, and I learned that they felt as the same pain and sadness as I did, and that they needed me to take care of them.

ZX:
Ms. Jiang says she is generally satisfied with her psychological health now and she is very grateful for psychologist Liu Meng’s help.

Jiang Ling:
Mr. Liu gave me an emergency counseling session when he heard one of my friends committed suicide a couple of months ago. If I didn’t come here, I probably would have committed suicide a long time ago.

ZX:
Ms. Jiang says she was inspired by psychologist Liu Meng’s effort and perseverance, so she decided to stay and help out. Mr. Liu has founded “Home for Mothers”, a counseling center for mothers dealing with trauma, especially the trauma of losing a child. Jiang Ling says she gets a lot of out of the work.

Jiang Ling:
What I do is just cry and laugh with other mothers, because I really understand their pain, and they can understand my pain as well. I feel that I have been paying back ever since I became a volunteer. In honor of my mother and my kid I am helping others, it makes me feel better.

ZX:
Doctor Lin from Peking University’s Institute of Mental Health comments that Sichuan people’s optimism is helping them put the trauma of the earthquake behind them. But she adds that group-related therapy requires careful supervision.

Lin Hong:
Psychology professionals need to guide and control it. If there is someone in a group who is more vulnerable, that person might not be able to deal with their traumatic memories when others talk about them. Professionals need to be able to recognize this kind of person and give them the support they require to avoid certain problems in the group.

ZX:
Hua-Dan is a Western-run non-governmental organization dedicated to offering creative workshops for migrant workers in rural areas of China. Since the earthquake, Hua Dan has been working with groups of Sichuan students and helping them build their confidence and conflict-solution skills. Its Sichuan manager Gao Yan describes their work:

Gao Yan:
When we did workshops in schools of earthquake areas, we mostly spend a whole day with children to do our theatre workshops, to help them let out their shadow from the earthquake.

ZX:
This is a sample of one of their workshops:

(Gaoyan and Lipeng facilitate the workshop)
Think about what your village was like after the earthquake?
The children started having the positions of falling and collapsing, twisting….

And now think about what will your villages like in twenty years?
And children star making blossoming gestures, with some holding hands together or hugging each other.

ZX:
This type of work is familiar to American psychologist Rob Blinn who heads up the psychology department at the United Family Hospital in Beijing. Doctor Blinn was one of the first psychologists to arrive in the earthquake-struck areas and has initiated the China Earthquake Relief Project, a long-term training program designed to educate healthcare providers to help healing adults and children suffering from trauma. He says their training is more focused on the physical sensation and the body rather than traditional psychotherapy.

Rob Blinn:
It’s called somatic experiencing and it’s based on the idea that trauma has held as much physically and psychologically in the body. For example when we work with somebody we get them to think about what’s happening, not so much during the time of the most traumatic part of the event, but first thing we do is trying to establish safety and then have them notice where they feel the safety in their body.

ZX:
Doctor Blinn has traveled to Sichuan 6 times since the earthquake. While he says he’s touched by survivors’ warm welcome, but he has also expressed some concerns.

Rob Blinn:
If you are in Mianyang, and some city, you have some access to resources, and chances are you probably have had some intervention, or at least access to it. Well if you are in some remote rural areas, it’s going to be more difficult to get help after the earthquake.

ZX: And he says the psychological support given to the earthquake-hit areas requires long-term planning.

Rob Blinn:
Given the extent of the number of the people who are traumatized by the earthquake and the extent of the destruction, the damage and the number people died, I think there will be work for years to come.

ZX:
Doctor Blinn says he plans to return to the earthquake zone again this October and January of next year, to do more consultation and in-depth training for people working with quake survivors. Rob’s team is also planning to build up a long term training center in Sichuan. In the meantime, many survivors will continue to suffer, while working at the same time to rebuild their lives and communities, one brick and one dance at a time.