SUNDAY 15th AUGUST MOURNING DAY

The Government has declared today a day of mourning in respect of the lives lost in the Gansu landslide last weekend. Over 1200 people have died and hundreds are still missing whilst the rain continues in that region. There was to be no entertainment and no light hearted TV and every station was showing the same programme including a service from Gansu where today the sun shone for the people. It was amazing that this special remembrance service was being held amid the chaos as people came together to pay their respects. There was a vast amount of floral tributes on display and yet the area has no electricity and no water supply. Every time we turned on the TV we saw scenes of destruction and faces of grieving people, not to mention mud. So as not to cause more destruction and loss of life a nearby lake was dynamited presumably to flow in another direction. I never quite understood the reasoning for this but it must have been necessary. I felt so sorry for a newly married policeman who had lost his wife and her family. She had been trying to contact him on his mobile phone but he was busy saving other lives and had not received the call. He was continuing to work endlessly – he said he needed to do that for his wife and would ‘write to her later’. Flags throughout China and all its embassies and consulates abroad would be flying their National Flag at half mast today. Just before 8am an official ceremony took place in Beijing where crowds had gathered for the ‘flag raising ceremony’ a daily sight only today that flag would only fly at half mast.
Keith was feeling off colour, the effects of sitting under an icy air conditioning unit on Friday afternoon. By 2pm he was feeling a little better and suggested we take a bus up to the ‘Mooncake Park’ to visit the ‘Bridge Museum’ this time. A number 11 bus as far as Haicang Bridge would be ideal.
Arriving at the entrance the waterfall was running – but for how long? We got our tickets and took the lower path down to a building under the bridge passing several small holiday chalets and a couple of restaurants on the way. No-one else was in the building other than a cleaner. The first floor was taken up with lots of models of the bridge, some of them should have been working but weren’t apart from one showing how the bridge would react in a ‘slow wind’. Lots of technical data which could have been interesting was it not in Chinese. On the second floor was a vast display of photos of bridges – ancient and modern. The photography was excellent in all the pictures but some really caught my eye such as one capturing a man herding his goats across a bridge that you would have second thoughts about stepping onto. Another was of two mountain peaks close together with a bridge swinging between the peaks. “No way” exclaimed Keith, “and that includes climbing up the mountain!” I would like to have known where all these bridges were and I suspect the small notice in each right hand corner would tell us along with the name of the photographer. As we left a large group of tourists were walking down the road, some of the young girls stopping outside the little homes to have their photos taken sitting on the steps. The waterfall was still in full flow and whilst Keith went to get the beers I went to take more photos. We sat in the shade under the trees round a small marble table as we had done on our previous visit. The kiosk owner was sitting nearby with a friend and brought over a branch of fruit. It was round, yellowy green and very thin skinned and about the size of a large marble. Once we had taken off the skin we revealed a white fleshy fruit with a very hard round brown stone not unlike a very small conker inside. A guess they are a variety of lychee. Seeing how much we were enjoying them he returned with several branches. I saw this fruit growing in the gardens yesterday and the supermarkets, street markets and street vendors are currently selling them. Since we have been here we have seen this year’s oranges, peaches, these fruits and yesterday saw walnuts in their shells, but many of the villagers selling large sweet melon have disappeared from the streets in our area anyway.