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Beyond the death and destruction

By Alexis Hooi (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-05 07:42

In the few years I have been in journalism, I am constantly being reminded that death and destruction never fail to grab the headlines.

Whether it is a baffling story of a fatal neighborhood burglary or the primal draw of a furious blaze gutting a downtown building, readers just cannot seem to get enough of human suffering.

So it is only understandable that many news reporters live for the moment, of getting to the scene of any story once it breaks, the bigger the event the better.

I too felt one of the greatest rushes early in my career when I reported from the scene of the December 2004 Asian tsunami in the Thai island resort of Phuket for a week, in the immediate aftermath of a disaster that claimed more than 200,000 lives in at least four countries.

In spring last year, I even gave a brief talk of how I covered the tsunami to my present colleagues.

Four days after I emphasized the addictive experience of reporting a major disaster, the May 12 earthquake struck Sichuan province.

For the past year, I have been wondering what it would be like deep in the major tremor-hit zones that have made for so many headlines.

I finally got the chance two weeks ago, when I became part of a handful of journalists from this newspaper to actually enter the quake epicenter of mountainous Wenchuan county.

The experience has made me believe that news does not center on the moment of death and destruction.

After passing through a quake-hit arterial road that continues to hinder crucial reconstruction supplies for the county, I understood the urgency of getting the 20.7 billion yuan ($3.03 billion) the local authorities say are still needed for a targeted two-year reconstruction of a region where peasants made on average a little over 1,000 yuan ($147) for the first three months of this year.

About one-third of the limited cropland in Wenchuan was destroyed in the quake and its farmers are now said to have about just 300 sq m of cropland each. More than 20,000 farmers in the region remain jobless or without farmland from the quake.

Still, progress on Wenchuan's road to recovery is encouraging.

Main transport lines are expected to be adequately cleared for restoring supplies in Wenchuan's worst-hit areas by the middle of the month, while power and telecommunication lines have also generally resumed, authorities say.

Homes, schools, health facilities and industries damaged in the disaster are all being promised to be up and ready again by the end of the year.

All these mean reportage on the Sichuan quake as it approaches its first anniversary must continue to move beyond the destruction in the region.

Members of the media who pulled out all the stops to report on the disaster last year have to equal or surpass those efforts to join the public and private sector in helping residents in Wenchuan and other areas.

Reporters last year rushed to give the world a peek at the devastation caused by the earthquake which killed more than 69,000 people, left nearly 18,000 missing and injured more than 374,000 others.

But now quake survivors wait for them to do the same work and show how lives are being regained.

E-mail: alexishooi@chinadaily.com.cn