Beijing Briefs

Beichuan Middle School was destroyed in last year’s Sichuan earthquake. Officials are reticent to give final numbers of students who died while attending the school, but they do offer figures for the number of students currently attending school at a temporary location in Mianyang today. That figure of 3000 students encompasses survivors from seven different Beichuan schools, all of which were reduced to twisted rubble. Prior to the earthquake, Beichuan Middle School alone had 2,700 students. This is the kind of math one has to do in order to fully grasp the impact of last year’s earthquake on the students who attend the school today.

Yet the students who survived don’t care about numbers; they only care about the images of individual faces of loved ones they saw die in the quake, images which are constantly with them. And they are, almost to a person, not about to share those deeply personal feelings with any nosy foreign reporter. So I was fortunate to meet Randy Simmon, the only foreign teacher at the temporary location in Mianyang, because he put some perspective on the matter. Randy, an American, who has been teaching at the school since last November, tells me that the grief these students have had to deal with is compounded by many things, but predominant is a very deep sense of survivor guilt.

Survivor guilt seems to be the biggest hurdle to overcome in the healing process. Randy recounts the story of a high school student who recently confided in him. The boy was terrified that if he started dating again, he would forget his girlfriend who died in the earthquake. This teenager is just one of many students who have come to talk to Randy.

Having so painfully been confronted with death and devastation, it appears these young survivors have one of two options: drown out the world around them, or focus on the road ahead. While Randy spoke with me, a tall girl named Sophie came bounding up to us. She was beaming, and it was clear that Randy is someone very important in her life. Sophie told me that she just had her hair cut. Then she told me she was training for an upcoming swimming competition and that the training was going well. After having seen many students in the area with crutches, in wheelchairs or limping, I thought to myself, this girl is so lucky to have gone through the earthquake unscathed. Later I found out that Sophie had lost both her legs in the earthquake and was only able to walk because of two prosthetic legs.

I can’t think of a better example of courage than Sophie. The official tally of students who died in the earthquake last year, 5,335, was released this week. We might never know the accuracy of this seemingly cold figure, which came out just in time for the first anniversary of the earthquake. But there can be no questioning the survivors, those living examples of courage who, by again embracing life, also keep alive the memory of friends they lost.