You may hear media reports about electricity being “restored to Chenzhou.” Some downtown areas of Chenzhou have had some restoration of electricity –Wal-Mart in Chenzhou has power as well as some other large stores and buildings. Last night, we observed a few restaurants open and a few residential areas with lights on. We know the government has been working quite furiously to try and restore power. Overall, however, the city appeared quite dark to us – as if little had changed. Still only two hotels have electricity and my half of the relief team spent the night in a hotel without power (quite cold!!). From our perspective on the ground, it sure feels like this is day #15 without power in Chenzhou.

Remember, the Chenzhou municipality is 74% rural — out of 4 million people in Chenzhou, only 400,000 are in the city; the rest are in the rural area. The discussion of “restored electricity” certainly is not accurate for those in the rural parts of the municipality. Our teams headed out this morning – to revisit the Chenzhou orphanage and other areas assisted. A second team headed to a much more remote area hearing that this area was quite severely impacted.

At the elderly home, most of the elderly there are without children or relatives to spend the Chinese New Year with. For them, a visitation from Operation Blessing along with the local 3-self Church Pastor (albeit strangers) was a very welcomed sight! We distributed items of warmth — quilts, winter coats and electric blankets — and offered words of hope and comfort.

Setting off to the next destination, we drove some 20 minutes on the muddy road filled with puddles, a sign of the ice finally beginning to thaw. Arriving at the village, we went to an elderly lady’s home made of mud and wood. With gratefulness she accepted our gifts of food and blanket. The circumstance of many in the village is unclear, with their income now frozen due to the effect of the cold spell on their crops and bamboo plantations. Moreover, many of their already weak building structures have been exacerbated by the heavy snow fall resulting in cracks…Many of the villages are concerned of building collapse in due time and other homes and buildings have roof damage.

There are no phones out here, so the only way to find out conditions is to visit. The situation is more severe than the other areas we have been. Their main crop is fruit trees — which appear to be a 100% loss. Not too far away from this area is a leper colony. We plan to come back here tomorrow to bring some basic relief supplies. They mostly need to repair buildings and start new fruit trees/other means of income. This is an area of extreme poverty.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am and is filed under Asia, China Disaster, James Xiao. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.