A Patch Of Corn - A Year On From Ground Zero

The woman was most certainly in her late forties, face darkened with years working in the sun-laden fields, hands callous with the damage of demanding physical labor. She gestured towards a small small, solitary patch of corn stalks standing in a quiet corner of her farm fields. Although the heavy grey clouds overhead hide the sunlight, the stifling summer air can easily mean dehydration for anyone working in the unforgiving farmland.

The woman is asked about the corn stalks, for they seem an anomaly amidst the rows of rice terraces that make up the majority of her family's agricultural income. Her eyes glint as she answers - the corn is grown on the very patch of land that her older sister and sixteen year-old son are buried under.

About four hours later, ten miles away in the town of YingXiu, a great white slab lies upon steps of crimson red carpet. It is a memorial site; a giant analogue clock face with thin fissures serving as clockhands, marking a ghostly hour of death at two twenty-eight in the afternoon. The sight steps on the accelerator for memories a year earlier; at the time the entire region was shuddering in a devastating earthquake of 8.0 magnitude, shaking apart the land and shattering hundreds of communities and thousands of lives, while drawing the eye of international attention immediately. Today, however, the site is silent. Chinese President Hu Jintao alongside other members of his cabinent is bowed in a deep, quiet minute, whilst a squadron of soldiers handle large vases of flowers and arranging them before the memorial.

The president and the rest of the political figures of authority proceed to pay their respects to the victims that reaches a staggering figure of approximately ninety-thousand. Each person in the line lays down a single white chrysanthemum flower before the giant white clockface, whilst giving their attention in the form of silence to the dead.

It was such a solemn event that captured the intense despair and tragedy of the calamity a year earlier. It was the worst to afflict China in thirty years, and with so many of the deaths being students and young children didn't provide a modicum of salvation for anyone. There has been a constant battle between parents who have been left childless; wives who have been left widows; husbands who have been left alone, against those responsible for the shabby construction of schools in the area. But with the collective opposition of government hush money, or intimidation to keep quiet has prevented much of their unquenced torment and anger from being expressed. Even now some still have doubts over the real figures of student and children deaths and numbers missing are truly accurate; some get the feeling the government is avoiding confrontations with those allegedly responsible, because such claims may only be riding upon interminable sadness and rage, and that such pursuits would ultimately use up much of the resources provided by such generous dontations from around the world.

The suicide rates of survivors have been clear indicators of the true trauma. Soldiers of the Communist Party that spent entire weeks after the earthquake carrying survivors over the trecherous, improvised mountainpaths to safety ended up losing their own children and loved ones back in another region, and have found the grief simply too much to bear. They have lost any type of memorabilia in the earthquake debris; the only thing that remains is a passport photo they carry in their wallets, or the final colored drawing done by the child before they were claimed by the earth. Others strip their walls of any reminders of the family they once had; picture frames are turned over and hidden, whilst photos are wrapped and stashed away - out of sight.

The earthquake does what all natural hazards do; they demonstrate the true fragility of human life amidst the progressing events of Mother Nature. It expresses with frightening clarity just how transience our existence is on the planet; that in the bigger picture of plate tectonics and physical geographical processes our established settlements are trivial and superficial. The despair that shocked us has never been so raw and devastating before, and even with life beginning to move on in a compulsory direction if it must rise and progress, SiChuan and the rest of China is still feeling the tremors of the May 12th 2008 earthquake, because hearts and souls are still shaken by its tremendous power.

Crouching low on her knees before the nearest corn stalk, the woman gently ran her palm along its thick stem. Her brown lips cracked a thin smile; she grips herself to not feel despair or sadness any longer, because this cornstalk represents what she hopes to soon embrace: that out of the disaster and tragedy, the small and new seeds of life can break from the trauma and begin to grow and thrive once more.