So I went to China last week (I back-dated all the entries to the correct dates, I'm actually publishing these April 30). I'm not sure how I ended up there, but I'm certainly glad I did. I attended the Sino-American earthquake workshop. The purpose of the meeting was to foster US and Chinese cooperation in earthquake research. The conference took place in Chengdu in the Sichuan province of Southern China, which is located in a basin near the edge of the Tibetan plateau, and also quite close to the fault on which the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake occurred.

As I embarked on my 24-hour flight (see picture of Kamchatka from the plane below) to a country where I didn't speak the language and didn't know a single human being, I was a little bit concerned. But luckily when I got to Beijing to catch the flight to Chengdu, there was a cluster of American-looking sciency types (i.e. plaid shirts, hiking pants and hiking shoes, backpacks, apple laptops) standing out in a sea of chinese men in business suits. It only took about 3 seconds of eavesdropping to confirm my suspicions because seismologists can't go very long without talking about earthquakes.


So me and my new companions hopped the last flight to Chengdu, found our chinese hosts and just before midnight made it to our hotel: the Longhu Beach Hotel. The hotel, as it turns out, has nothing whatsoever to do with Beaches, there aren't any beaches in Chengdu. I feared that I brought my bathing suit for nothing, but luckily the shower drain didn't work and the shower flooded the bathroom with water so I got to go for a swim anyway. It was a nice luxurious hotel though, they gave me slippers, a bathrobe, a fancy desk and armchair and complimentary dried squid snacks. They had free internet too, but my email literally took 20 minutes to load. I think that's how long it took China to read and censor all my emails. but enough about that.

The first two days of the conference were dedicated to a field trip with chinese seismologists where we explored the fault scarp, landscape changes, and damages from the 2008 Mw 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake. This earthquake was one of the greatest disasters ever to strike the Sichuan province, killing about 80,000 people. Many of the building collapses were schools filled with children, a tragedy that has generated controversy over shoddy building techniques used in constructing the buildings housing the future of China.

Field Trip, day 1:

Departure: We pulled our jetlagged bodies out of bed and climbed sleepily into two tour buses. But we were promptly awoken by the unique driving style of our drivers (and everyone else in china). This typically involves charging full speed ahead in the desired direction and speeding up if there is a pedestrian or other solid object in the way while blasting the horn. If said solid object doesn't jump out of the way in terror, the next step is swerving into oncoming traffic to pass them. I decided it was best to sit in the back of the bus where I could live in ignorant bliss about what was happening up front.

We sped out of the city into the surrounding countryside past endless small farm plots tended by hand and people sweeping the side of the highway with straw brooms. These scenes starkly contrasted with the ultra-modern infrastructure under construction all around them, such as high speed rail that hosts trains as fast as the TGV and new highways and overpasses.

It was apparent from the second I arrived that China has a big problem with air pollution. There is an ever-present gray haze that blocks out the sun, and objects in the not-so-distant distance fade rapidly into the gray ether. Though not an ideal situation, and frustrating to eyes used to seeing clear views, it can add a strange beauty to the landscape. It even provides an element of surprise. For example, as we hurtled closer to our first stop across what seemed to be flat farmland stretching in all directions, all of a sudden the faint outline of enormous towering mountains popped out of the haze, as if they had sprung freshly out of the ground (see a foothill in the haze below). We had come to the edge of the Sichuan basin, the southeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau.


Soon after the mountains appeared and their outlines slowly became clearer (but never actually clear) and towered higher and higher above us, we entered what a sign in English called “tunnel region,” which turned out to be a quite accurate description, as we then darted through several multi-kilometer-long tunnels. Rumors says that they have all been built since the 2008 earthquake. The previous roads that followed the river were wiped away by landslides in the earthquake. An amazing engineering feat to build these tunnels so quickly.


First stop: The tunnels brought us higher and higher into the mountains, and after the last one, we popped out in the town of Yingxiu, high enough in elevation to allow some sunshine to penetrate the haze. What the sunlight illuminated was a landscape torn to pieces, first by landslides and debris flows, then intense reconstruction. Our Chinese geologist guides took us to a location by the Minjiang river where we had our first of many views of the fault scarp of the earthquake. At this place, the fault cut from where we stood, across the river and up a valley now filled with a newly constructed chute to funnel water from floods and debris flows away from populated areas. The ground on the hanging wall side uplifted 2.4 meters vertically at this location. The geologists dug a trench here across the fault and found offsets in the soil layers from the 2008 Wenchan earthquake and two others that they dated to have occurred about 3000 and 6000 years ago, suggesting a recurrence interval for similar earthquakes on this fault of 3000 years. (They are showing us a poster of the trenches they dug at this site)


Prior to the 2008 earthquake and subsequent studies, they had no historical record of any earthquakes larger magnitude 7 in this area and they considered the seismic risk to be relatively low… China has a historical record extending way further back in time than most places, but not back to the last event 3000 years ago. This highlights how much there is that we don’t know about where, when and what size earthquakes to expect in any one area because these judgments are often based on the historical record. Even the longest historical records for humans barely scratch the surface of understanding what happens on geologic time - yet another excuse to feel insignificant.

When the earthquake happened, the town of Yingxiu was devastated. Not only did many buildings collapse due to the shaking itself, but there were also massive landslides and debris flows that came down into the town, buried houses and also diverted the river through town. Now much of the town has been rebuilt with fresh houses and the river channelized way from it. There are so many people in China that they cannot simply abandon these areas near the fault so they just build everything back up again.

Stop 2: One part of town was not rebuilt, but was left in its wrecked state on purpose as an earthquake relic for tourists, the Middle school of Yingxiu. This was our next stop, along with many other buses of Chinese tourists. The Chinese have taken an interesting approach to recovery by leaving many of the damaged buildings intact and setting them up for tourism. I think this is a good approach because humans have a very short collective memory. Though I imagine it must be hard to live in Yingxiu and see the ruined middle school every day where maybe your children were killed or injured. See the memorial area below where people bring flowers for the dead and tourists come to see the ruins.


This stop was my first sight of real-life earthquake damage. Even from far away the sight of misshapen and twisted buildings knotted my stomach.

The first floor of one classroom building was completely flattened by the heavy floors on top. A student dormitory was just completely collapsed and no one could possibly survive inside, but luckily the students were in class at the time and those buildings fared slightly better.


Most buildings were mildly or severely off-kilter, with missing windows and walls, but furniture still inside. The poor construction was obvious, most walls had no rebar at all, just brick or unreinforced cement that crumble to pieces in an earthquake. Some select columns had some rebar, but it was so thin it might as well have been yarn. All of it was bent and twisted, at one location people were salvaging rebar from some ruins and they had a truck full of twisted metal that looked like fried noodles. At this place, just 40 children were killed, I say “just” because in many other places entire schools filled with children were crushed under the weight of the walls or in landslides. One of the prominent seismologists said that this town was lucky that only 40 died in the school, in some places the school collapsed killed hundreds. He still can't wipe from his mind what he saw when they began to lift away the rubble to find the children's bodies.


Stop 3: After our first of many such somber stops, we took a break from the tragedy to eat a traditional Sichuan style lunch in a newly developed tourist town in the mountains called Gaoyuan. This was the first of many meals eaten in the Chinese style. Everyone has a small plate or bowl and a pair of chopsticks, then the waitresses bring out plate after plate of food and put it on the center of the table, pile the plates in pyramids when the space runs out. Then everyone just directly grabs things with their chopsticks and moves it directly into their mouths or the little plate. Germaphobe Americans would not approve.


I quickly learned that the signature flavor of Sichuan food is SPICY! Some dishes are covered in piles of hot peppers (that you’re not supposed to eat, as some found out in an unfortunate way) along with spicy oil and shovels full of “Sichuan peppers” that make the tongue and lips numb and give a unique taste that I have never experienced before and therefore cannot describe. I also noticed that Sichuan food is extremely meat heavy…and not just any meat, but every meat. Nearly any part of any animal is fair game, including things such as pig feet and snout, many kinds of tripe, duck blood, sea cucumbers, trachea, tendons, weird looking fish with head and fins still attached and staring back disapprovingly, and many more unrecognizable things of which I probably don’t want to know the origin. And I ate these things, of course I had no idea what they were until a few days later. What a rapid transition I have made from eating no meat whatsoever for over 13 years to eating pig ears in just a few short months. They say eating pig ears improves hearing to pig-like levels. They also served us many different kinds of greens, and when we asked for the names, all of them were called “mountain vegetable.” Meaning that they are edible plants gathered from the nearby mountains, not cultivated. They were delicious.

Stop 4:

After lunch we strolled around the farmland near the restaurant in Gaoyuan because the fault actually cuts right through the village. This stop was more comical than tragic because the hanging wall of the fault that was uplifted popped part of a bicycle racing track a few meters into the air turning a regular bike race into BMX in mere seconds. Vertical offsets were something like a 2 meters at this location, you can see me holding up the uplifted bike racing track for scale.




Stop 5:

We then bused up some dirt roads into a rural valley with the fault running up the middle. We stopped by a steep gully where there appeared to be two houses, one on top of the gully and one below, but in fact that was once one house that was cut in half by uplift of about 5 meters at this location (see picture below)


The steep slope we stood over was new. Just up the hill from there was a closed restaurant and hotel. The building was fine, it did not collapse or have much structural damage from the shaking, but the main problem here were the giant boulders that bounced down the hill and crashed through the walls, including two neat holes punched into the walls of the restaurant in a scene straight out of looney tunes.


We poked around, snapping pictures like seismo-razzi when this lady came out and started speaking vigorously to us in Chinese. Of course I didn’t understand what she was saying so I backed away slowly, unsure if she was happy or upset. I later found out that she was agitated because we came around taking spectacular pictures and marveling at the damage (just like many other scientists, tourists, and government officials before us), but then we leave and nothing changes. Still three years later no one has done anything for her or her family except take away pictures. Her building and her life are still in ruins.

Just up the gully, we came across a paved road built precisely along the lineation of the fault. A car was driving on it when the earthquake hit and the driver, feeling the shaking and thinking he had a flat tire or something, got out of the car to check. Upon realizing that everything was shaking and the road uplifting below his feet, the driver fled. The fault lifted up right along the road and tilted it as an entact piece to about a 30-degree angle with the car still on it. The sideways car is still precariously perched there today.



We continued walking along the fault, past roaming chickens, scruffy dogs and wooden shacks, until we came to a temple that was also located nearly on top of the fault. When we arrived at the temple, there were pink balloons, tables and tents set up, and a lot of people milling about. The clink of glasses, mahjong tiles, and Chinese mumblings drifted out of a newly restored building nearby. A wedding celebration was going on - and we crashed it! I felt weird about it, but our Chinese hosts just walked right up the steps towards the temple so we followed and everyone from the wedding came outside to observe the parade of scruffy pale scientists file past.


The temple had been relocated to this spot from higher in the mountains right before the earthquake. This was an unfortunate decision because now the ancient temple has been destroyed. Nothing left but the severed stumps of the columns, piles of bricks, and a giant Buddha statue. The enormous temple bell was resting on the ground and the locals had built a temporary wood framed shack around the Buddha statues. I had never been to a Buddhist temple before and I was kind of taken aback when I stepped into the dark shack and was greeted by an enormous colorful smiling Buddha.


A few of the scientists paid their respects to the Buddha (and to the power of earthquakes perhaps) by burning incense on an altar outside.


We decided not to crash the wedding feast. According to my Chinese friends, for weddings, the family set up what are called “stream tables” and all the friends and relatives flow in over the course of a few days, eat a lavish meal, then flow away and are replaced by new relatives.

Stop 6:

I’m still writing about the first day and I’m on page 5 of my notes, and it’s not over yet. Long day! We stopped next at a tea house in the countryside where we sat in a pavilion in a garden, drank tea and chatted. The pavilion was on a little island in a pond and the garden was sprinkled with living statues where they had woven plants into elaborate pagodas and giant vases.


The Chinese typically drink tea in a way opposite to what I learned in the fancy tea shops in Seattle. They use a big tall glass, not any sort of tea cup or mug, throw in a bunch of green tea leaves and jasmine flowers without any sort of filter, pour in the hot water and drink it straight with the leaves still in there. They don’t remove the leaves after 1-2 minutes like we do to reduce the bitter taste, the same leaves can sit there for hours. The waitresses come by frequently and refill it with hot water. Interestingly, this tea didn’t get bitter after a while, perhaps it is the quality of the tea.

I had an interesting conversation with a Chinese scientist about earthquake prediction over tea. Most of the seismology world has given up on earthquake prediction and moved to probabilistic hazard assessment, mitigation, and early warning systems instead. The government of China, however, has mandated that it is the job of seismologists to predict earthquakes, even though there are no clear or agreed upon ways to do it. There was one successful prediction and evaluation in the 1970s because there was a very noticeable series of foreshocks where a town was evacuated countless lives were saved, but many many more failures. Foreshocks are the only known and accepted precursor, but there is not way to tell if a given earthquake is a foreshock or just a small regular earthquake until after the mainshock arrives, so they are not very useful in prediction.

After tea, we once again clustered around big tables for another enormous Sichuan feast, this time the plates stacked even higher, but were placed on a huge lazy susan so one can spin the table until the desired dish is within reach (or spin it away if the dish in front is too disturbing, boiled pigs feet for example). My favorite dish was the warm coconut-tapioca soup with gogi berries. Mmmm… This time I found myself at an entirely Chinese-speaking table and for a while I was constantly asking people ‘what did you say’ until I gave up and just laughed when they laughed. The good thing about sitting at a table like that is they can tell me exactly what each weird looking food was, though sometimes it’s better not to know.



End of day 1:

After returning to Chengdu, in order to stay awake till a reasonable hour and battle jetlag, I ventured out with three new-found friends to the center of Chengdu. The center is sleek and modern, with bright lights and luxury shops and a huge pedestrian mall. It was jam packed with people strutting about in their stylish clothes and eating street food.


My favorite thing about street-life at night is the dancing ladies. After dinner, tons of ladies meet in groups on the sidewalks and public squares and blast traditional Chinese music from speakers and dance together like a slow motion aerobics class with a chinese flair. Vera and I tried joining into a few of these, but we were always met with glares, I guess I’m not as good as I thought.


Finally I returned to the hotel, flooded the bathroom again and to make it even better, this time I ripped the entire towelrack off the wall simply by placing a towel on it. Too tired to care.