China's workers pause to remember quake victims
Construction workers put down their tools, drivers stopped suddenly in the street, and rescuers briefly paused in their increasingly vain search for survivors amid the rubble of China’s earthquake devastation.
Busy, bustling China stopped today to mourn the estimated 50,000 people killed by the earthquake exactly one week earlier.
Traffic froze on the highways threading through the country’s cities including Beijing, the capital, and the relentless boom of construction paused as workers clambering over new skyscrapers joined a government-ordered three minutes of reflection.
In the quake zone, rescuers racing to free the dwindling numbers of survivors also interrupted their work to mark the exact moment the ground shook with enough power to render large parts of central Sichuan province into rubble.
The breadth of today’s minutes of mourning underscored the deep impact that China’s worst natural disaster in three decades has had on its 1.3 billion people.
Hundreds gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the city’s historical and governmental heart, where a huge Chinese flag was lowered to half-mast in a solemn military ceremony.
At 2.28pm local time (7.28am BST), the crowd fell silent and stood, many with heads bowed, while air raid sirens wailed. The city’s normally choking traffic stopped dead in its tracks and millions of drivers blared their horns.
Shop, restaurant and office workers emptied into the streets, bowing their heads and folding their hands to join the ceremony – scenes mirrored across China.
In stricken Beichuan, rescuers in orange jumpsuits stopped their digging and stood quietly amid the rubble with eyes downcast, cradling their white hard-hats.
“Our hearts are so heavy, so many of our compatriots are dead. As long as we try our best, we have some small hope,” said Ma Cangchuan, a rescuer in Beichuan.
The ceremony over, his team returned to work.
Today was the start of an official three-day mourning period – the first in modern China for anything other than the death of a national leader. When sirens blared 11 years ago after the death of communist patriarch Deng Xiaoping, people mostly went about their business.
The mood in Tiananmen Square – the focus point of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 – was of empathy for fellow Chinese.
“This is not the government organising it,” said Wang Xu. “This is the first time civilians have mourned in public.”
After the period of silence, the crowd started chanting and punching their fists in the air. “Go China,” “Go Sichuan,” “Long Live China,” people yelled. Police asked them to disperse after about an hour.
In the commercial centre of Shanghai, peddlers handed out small flags at “half-mast” – glued in the middle of the stick.
“In people’s eyes we are just migrant hawkers. But we also care,” said Zhang Yu, who gave up meagre earnings from his usual trading to distribute the flags.
Trade was suspended on China’s stock and commodities exchanges during the three-minute period. In Hong Kong, staff at the Disneyland park closed rides and halted performances.
On the Wangfujing shopping street in Beijing, people turned off their mobile phones and wore white ribbons marked with the message “lovingly remember.”
Construction workers stood still 23 floors above the business district, in the skeletal frame of an unfinished building.
Below, the street teemed with office workers, in scenes reminiscent of a week earlier when people rushed outside when their high-rises shook with the power of the 7.9-magnitude quake some 960 miles away.
Chinese President Hu Jintao and other top Communist Party leaders – in dark suits each with a white flower in their lapel – were shown on state television bowing their heads at a tribute in the central government compound of Zhongnanhai.
The government says the death toll from the earthquake was expected to reach 50,000, and that some four million dwellings were destroyed.
