By Yang Guang
Published: 2008-03-04

From Nation, page 10, issue no. 356, February 25th, 2008
Translated by Zuo Maohong
Original article: [Chinese]

In the twilight of downtown Chenzhou, streetlights began to flicker on. As people came and went, the public bathing center and other gathering spaces came to life much as they had before. Everything seemed normal, save for the wet ground and ubiquitous anti-frost advertisements that reminded residents of the hardship of the previous weeks.

Three successive snowstorms and freezing rain during the Spring Festival in February had isolated this small city in south Hunan province for ten days. During that time, its power grid was decimated, public transportation shut down, and water supplies scarce.

Despite the rebuilding and gradual return to life after the storm, the lingering of trauma was still tangible. "There are floods and droughts every year here, so we are used to natural disasters. But this time many of us panicked. The city was so close to coldness and death," said Li Ronghua, one local.

Nestled between Nanling Mountains and Luoxiao Mountains in Hunan province, 75% of Chenzhou's land is populated by hills and mountains. On normal days, cars and motorcycles shuttle through its narrow, wet, undulating streets. But its isolated charm in this moist region has become its worst enemy during and after the storms.

Waking up from a Nightmare
Alongside the long narrow streets, people sat down and chatted. Outside of a hotel, Xiao Zhang, the reception manager, was busy drying newly-washed sheets in the sun. "Just three days ago, all the rooms were occupied, mostly by electric repair workers and transport workers from across the country. The city was off the power grid for over ten days. Nearly all the public facilities were ruined. The hotel had to maintain business by candles. We bought over 100 boxes of candles at 1.5 yuan each," Zhang recalled.

Not far from the hotel, several young men walked into an internet bar. They hadn't been able to surf the net for half a month, one of them said, due to blackouts. Even those with generators had donated their equipment to relief agencies.

To them, life here was more tied to the more developed Guangdong province in the south, than Hunan. They were often the first in the province to hear new things, the young man said, due to proximity to Guangdong. Many of their friends had even moved there, he added, because there were too many disasters here, and they believed it was safer to go away.

Chen, a local elderly, recalled that the loss of contact with the outside world during the snowstorm had left locals in panic over food supplies. Everybody tried to stock up food during the snow storm, she said, and rice at 2.5 yuan per jin (500 grams) was sold out within half an hour. There were even people who offered 50 yuan for a candle and still failed to buy one, she added.

In the post-storm days, every morning at eight o'clock, a crowd would gather in one of the local supermarkets, waiting to buy subsidized goods--in response to rising food prices, the local government had been dispatching pork and egg reserves to the supermarkets for sale at relatively low prices.

Along with food prices, labor costs also increased, said one official who worked in Guiyang county's communications bureau (Guiyang is a county in Chenzhou). Due to the urgent need to repair the power grid and clear debris from roads, he said, repair workers were paid 500 to 800 yuan a day during the Spring Festival.

After power supplies were restored and roads opened to traffic in downtown Chenzhou, many begun to hold yard sales of their emergency supplies. Chen was selling her candles at 0.5 yuan each, which she had initially bought at two yuan.

Working in China Pacific Insurance Company, Zhao Gang had never been so busy. "Before, it was usually I who contacted them first. Now many clients volunteer to visit me for claims. Most coming to make claims have suffered injuries resulting from slipping on ice, or losses related to livestock that died from the frost," he said.

However, compared with those living in elsewhere of Chenzhou, residents in the downtown area were lucky. During this reporter's visit, most of the Chenzhou region was still suffering from damaged infrastructure and power failure. Sitting at the disaster relief center, his eyes bloodshot, the city's secretary general Yuan Jiayou said the relief work had just begun, and would last at least until May. It was tough work, he said, as 70% of Chenzhou had yet to regain power.

Preparing and Rebuilding
In contrast to the rebound of downtown Chenzhou, Guiyang, its biggest county, was still cold and quiet. In the local government office, several clerks were sitting around a small stove, rubbing their hands. The power outage had stretched for 20 days. To stay connected with other disaster relief teams, Guiyang's had moved to the nearby radio and television bureau, where there were several power-generating cars dispatched by higher governments.

Meanwhile, repair workers from neighboring provinces were working on the power network night and day. According to Mo Xiong, the county's deputy mayor, over 40,000 electric poles in Guiyang collapsed during the snow storm. There were more than 3,000 people there repairing the system, he said, adding that the county was still facing tough times.

The municipal government's emergency response plan turned out to be useless when such unprecedented extreme weather came.

As there had rarely been such frost and snow in south China, Yuan explained, power facilities were designed less ice-proof than those in the north. For example, in Chenzhou, electric poles' ice-holding capacity was 15 millimeters, far lower than what the skies dropped this time--165 millimeters.

Liu, the leader of the second repair team from Changsha, had been working on a mountain for ten days. They worked through every minute of daylight, he said.

Xie, the head of Xialiao village, said repair work had progressed slowly as it was difficult to rebuild electric poles and towers on high mountains. Without any crane on the mountain, they had to move the poles by hand or with peg supports, he said, adding that to build one pole required 20 workers and one whole day.

Every time they tried to build up a pole, which was some 50 meters tall, Xie described, there would be two people bound to its top, giving instruction to workers below. The people below always got so worried about their co-workers on the top that they sweated despite the chill, he said.

Since the first day that disaster struck, Chenzhou, about 50,000 or more people from within and out of Hunan had been engaged in relief work, Yuan said.

Officials said that the Chenzhou government had appropriated 81.5 million yuan for relief, and paid in advance 61 million yuan for basic living allowances. The local civil affairs department had distributed 4,033 tons of rice, 19,800 barrels of food oil, 167,000 pieces of winter clothing, and 19,000 quilts.

The rebuilding work faced various challenges, the most serious being financial. The repair of the power grid, resuming production at factories, and the recovery of agriculture and forestry were all stunted by funding shortages.

"In 2006, Chenzhou was hit by the biggest flood in 500 years. In 2007, it encountered a severe drought and another flood even bigger than that of 2006. This year, we met an unprecedented snow storm. After all of these disasters, we have taken the lead in developing emergency response systems. We know the urgency need to invest more to reinforce the system," said Li, director of the policy research office of the Chenzhou government.