Recently, I felt more and more helpless. Once, when I was younger (around 20 years old, I think), I always classify myself into the group who represent the public opinions – we think exactly like the massive public. However, in the recent years, especially after I started this, and at some special events, I just realize that my opinions are often on the opposite side of what most of people are thinking. I felt pretty worried and felt afraid.

Like the recently, people really get angry of many companies, especially international companies, and public companies, for not donating enough money to the disaster relief in Sichuan. For example, Vanke and its CEO Wang Shi were attached like crazy, just because they only donate 2 million RMB to the earthquake at the night of the earthquake, and Wang Shi justified the amount by saying it is what the board authorized them to do. For me, I felt Wang Shi did exactly the right thing by stick to the principles by not abuse his right and donate something that does not belong to him. However, I am obviously on the wrong side of the camp from most of my friends – they said I am stupid, not to mention the massive attach on the Internet.

For most of the company CEOs, when I check their decision to donate tens of millions of dollars, people get very excited, and no one really check whether they are authorized to do it. Also, many companies where boycotted, just because they donate just several million Yuan, instead of tens of million. KFC was boycotted, and people are protesting before many branches, in many cities. What happened before Carrefour happened before KFC, and many other multinational brand companies, simply because they just donate 10 million RMB, not more. Like Wanglaoji, another local brand, who donate 100 million RMB to Sichuan, which is named the best company of China (according to Nanfang Weekend). Personally, I think emotionally speaking, there are some sense in it, but rationally, I don’t think most of the companies, especially public companies can donate more than what its share holders authorized them to do. The current donation (like crazy) is a very good thing for Sichuan, but it hurt the well being of China in long term – it is public abuse of their power, and if I don’t put it into the crime bucket.

Recently, around the earthquake, there are many opinions around donation amount, and many many issues. The really good thing is people start to discuss about it publicly. I do feel very happy about it, although I don’t agree with many of the reaction from the audience.

However, I really get depressed, that free speech is not pressed by the government, it is well censored by the public opinions. I don’t want to mention to much of it, just because I know I will be another Wangshi – being the target of most of people in China, and be called whatever bad thing people can think of.

So, I am really afraid of public opinion now. Inside myself, I often feel that I stand on the other side of the people in this country. You know that kind of feeling?

P.S. Ping Pong Game Resumes

I am resuming my Ping Pong game practice now. I played Ping Pong for some time at night, and finally get back to the status I am in many weeks ago. Now I feel much better, and ready to challenge many people tomorrow.

P.S. Met Christine, Elliot, and Thalia

Met Christine Lu from The China Business Network, Elliot from CNReviews.com, and Thalia from ChinaOnTV.com. Nice talk about blogging, business in China, classified a little bit, and the upcoming cnbloggercon.

Olympic Torch has arrived in Shanghai today, but it is extremely low key this time.

I didn’t go to the torch relay since it is working day, and when I turn on TV or radio at night, there is no any mention of the torch so far. All the news are still about Sichuan earthquake and relief effort. I think it is the right thing to do.

The torch went on the same street as where I am living and it is about 3 km away from my home.

Tomorrow, the Torch will march for its second day in Shanghai, and it will arrive the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Minhan campus.

P.S. At night, I saw the replay of the relay on Shanghai TV Sports channel.

Since I have previously hosted my little blog at one of the data center in Shanghai, I got an email in my mailbox from the government (Internet branch, News department, Shanghai Municipal Government) about the requirements for websites related to the recent earthquake.

Brief translation (for time being, didn’t fine tune words, and it just reflecting the basic ideas. Refer to the original letter for details).

To every web site in this city:

The Statement Department decides to hold "National Mourn Day" from May 19 to 21 . According the spirit of  the instruction of News Office of State Department, the following requirements are announced:

1. Every web site should propaganda and report State Department’s Announcement promptly, dominantly, and repeatedly;  should timely and dominantly report mourning activities of Party Central Committee, State Department and local’s. In parallel with propaganda and report on the Internet, related web site should utilize mobile SMS, MMS, Mobile newspaper, etc methods to report. State Department Announcement should be put at the dominate location on the home page of every web site during National Mourning Day.
2. Every web site stops 3 days of all kinds of entertainment activities and services. From 0:00 19thto 24:00 21th, every game web site, game channels of every web site must be all closed; every entertainment channel and entertainment kind of video and audio channel web site must be covered by mourning pages; pages under these channels must not be accessible. All entertainment forum of all web sites must all be closed; all music, entertainment video search function of all search engine must be all closed; all entertainment kind of advertisement must be all closed.
3. Organize mourning on the web well. Atmosphere of all web site must be appropriate to the national morning.  All major news site, and major commercial sites should well organize mourning activities joined by netizens, should completely reflect the painful sentiment and patriotic heart of massive netizen.
4. Effectively do the media management job. All major web site should implement 24 hour on duty, meanwhile must have person-in-charge to lead the team. Every web site should effectively strengthen management of forum, blog etc interactive columns. All comments that are not in align with the main theme of anti-earthquake and disaster relief must be completely deleted. The job implementation situation of every web site should be reported in electronic form to Municipal Government News Office (mailbox: sinonet@shanghai.gov.cn).
5. Make disciplines strict. For web site who does not do the effective job effectively, should be seriously criticized, and handled. Web sites which do not obey requirements will be all closed, and will be hold responsible afterwards.

Earthquake didn’t change China too much.

1. Focus media stopped all the LCD commercial these three days. There are black screen everywhere in this city.
2. Bund turns off lights at nights.
3. All newspapers are black and white.
4. All the national flags were lowered
5. Many young people are vending national flags, or T-shirts with "Love China"
6. Donation boxes are still seen in many places
7. No film on these days

From yesterday, all major Chinese Internet providers changed their home page to black and white to show respects to the victims in the Sichuan earthquake. Here are some screenshots (caution: big image, and may takes some time).

Yahoo China

Sina News

Sohu

Netease

We also changed our homepage to black and white at Kijiji.cn

Including my small blog:

1. The whole country mourned at 2:28, and it is the first time I experienced – and maybe the only one in the recent history of China. That is very moving experience. When I lowered my head with all my team members in the lobby of the 18th floor of my office building, and standing under the sunshine, which pulled in from the glass roof 20 meters above my head, I saw the structure of the roof from the reflection of the tiled floor. I don’t really remember what I thought, but I know the picture has ironed deeply into my memory. I am sure even after few years, I still can recall this exact moment. Compassion makes people better, and to feel the pain of others as ours is so important for us to create a better world. Mourning and remember those who lost lives during all kinds of disasters is so important for us to continuously improve the world. I am just afraid that people will forget them very soon as we did for the Luoyang fire (in which about 400 people were killed)
2. The central government is doing great during this event. If during the SARS, the government is completely unprepared of such disaster, during the snow disaster this Spring Festival, it is a good rehearsal of all the contingency plans, during this earthquake, we saw a much more mature modern government. Kudos go to them, and especially Premier Wen Jiabao – he did great.
3. Media plays an important role in this event, especially state-run media CCTV, and Central Radio Station. Their 24-hour real-time broadcast helped a lot. It is again, the first time, and there are much breakthrough. It is rare that people like me and Wendy really sit before TV set instead of computer to get the latest information about the earthquake. It shows the positive contribution of the free information flow to disaster relief.
4. Compassion shows more commonality than difference in this event. I am moved that before natural disaster, many countries and media paused the dispute and started to donate and help. In Shanghai (I always avoid using big words like "China" since I only experienced the situation in one city, and don’t want to take it for granted that I saw "China". In this sense, even Shanghai is a big word, which I’d better say "I"), after the 3 minutes mourn, I feel people are closer, since people realized there are more commonality between people than difference – the same will to help, and the same pain of compassion.

P.S. At night, spent one hour with Margaret Warner from NewsHour of PBS for an interview Internet space in China. At the end, via the program, I said, I do appreciate the concerns, help, donation, and all relief effort from the people in the United States and other countries to Sichuan in China. I did mean it. Thank you.

I have changed the color of my blog to black and white, and will keep it in the next 3 days.

I am still watching TV about the earthquake, to get more information about the recent progress.

Out of blogging for one day.

I admit, that I didn’t wrote too much on the recent earthquake…

I didn’t write, not because I am not concerned. To be honest, there are many reasons.

1. TV has been out of my life for a long time. But recently, TV is the center of Wendy and my time at night. We surround the TV set, and watch the latest news from TV all the time – switching between CCTV-1 and Oriental TV, to get the latest reports. At night, we watch TV till very late, which basically occupied my time. Although the scene of the TV is sometimes repeated, but I cannot help sticking with it, and to get latest update.

2. I don’t feel that I can provide unique values by writing too much. As a guideline of this blog, I write things around me that I personally experience, or have personal opinions. First hand information is always what I am seeking for. These days, I suffer from not having any first hand information myself. News site and my friends’ shanghaiist.com already did great job in covering real time news or aggregate information from other sites, and bloggers in Sichuan area did wonderful job to continuously broadcast so I don’t think by quoting their story add unique values.

3. I feel very sad these days when I watch TV programs, when I saw many people were buried under the rubble, and this is already the 4th day of the disaster, and the hope for them to get back is turned into deep sorrow. For me? I don’t have too much comments. What can I say, other then share the pain of the people there? Keeping silent may be the best way for me to do – I mean emotionally, I don’t want to post photos of the misfortunate people there.

I attended the special program by ICS Culture Matters on earthquake as guest speaker, and I was asked the question: "How, as an individual, can help?"

Well. Besides donate money, or cloths, and spread out the news and method about how to help, there is not too many things we can do currently. The bottleneck is at the epicenter. During the program, we had telephone call with a volunteer from Shanghai, who rushed into the area to help. He said: Don’t rush into the area now, since it will add burden to transportation system, and the volunteer him/herself needs food, which is really rare resources there. So what we can do to help?

Besides the link I posted just now, I think we need to take longer term to think about help in the next few months or even two years time-frame. After the first 72 hours of rescuing people, the whole area needs to be reconstructed, and orphans need to be taken care of, and the disabled needs to make a living… There are many things in the long run that we can help. Just keep the helping spirit going, and help in longer terms.

My friend Elliot Ng has created a page of China Earthquake Donation Guide, and will update the page to reflect the latest information. I believe this page is very useful for people who want to donate. Please send your help to people who need it.

When I wrote my blog on May 12, I just focused on what happened around me. At that time, there is completely no detailed news about how bad the earthquake in Sichuan was. (I still remembered that when we flee out of the building, I thought the earthquake was happening some where in the Pacific). Even when I know it was in the mountain area in Sichuan, I said: “It is lucky that it is in very rural area, and not many people are living there”. I was wrong, deadly wrong.

Last night, Wendy and I watched news report on TV for the whole night. As young parents, we were really sad to see the primary schools were destroyed and more than 1000 kids are buried in the building – I can feel every second counts. Now they are in the ground for more than 48 hours. When I saw small school bags on the ground, my tears really run down, for long time…

It is sad. Really sad.

Now, according to Sina, 14866 people already died and about 25788 were still buried under the collapsed building. Let us keep praying for the people who are still alive and hope they get rescued very soon.

At around 3:00 PM, it is clear that everyone feels dizzy on the 18th floor of the building. The feeling is similar with what I felt in 1996 on the same campus. I immediately ask the whole company to recuse from the building – I am happy that we are the first company in the building to flee to the outside. – The security looks puzzled when they saw us running down the fire stairs. I will talk more when I get back home from work. (We run so fast, and I didn’t bring my camera and mobile phone with me).

Everything is safe, but I don’t know what is happening in the center of the earthquake.

Update May 12, 2008

Now I am back to my small white table in my living room in my home. It is already confirmed that the earthquake happened in Wenchuan near Chengdu, at 7.8 magnitude. It is more than 2000 km away from Shanghai, but we felt the shack so clearly in Shanghai.

What to Do During Earthquake

The last time I felt earthquake is back in 1996 in Shanghai, when I was in grade 2 of Shanghai Jiaotong University. It was a stronger earthquake than this one (as felt from where I stayed). We were in the dorm at floor 6.

When we felt dizzy, and felt many furnitures in the rooms are moving, everyone rushed out of the room. At that time, I made a choice that I felt very regret at that moment, although it is the right action to take.

Because of the expectation of Luoyang to have a big earthquake within 10 years, the earthquake education in Luoyang was pretty good, and I was told the best place to stay during earthquake is the rest room. There are several reasons:

• It is small in space, and concentration of building structures, so it is the strongest part of most residential building.
• It has water if you are trapped, so you can survive longer.
• It has long line of water pipes. Even if you are buried in the building, you can make some noise with the pipe so others can help you.

So, I grasped another friend and rushed into the washroom. Guess what happened?

At the very beginning, we heard many people rushing around and the whole building is very noise. They all rushed to the stairs to get out of the building.

Within 1 minute, the whole building is deadly silent, and there are only two people still in the building – my friend and myself. The worse thing is, the earthquake is stronger and stronger – it is obviously a bad idea to rush out to the stairs at this time.

So I understood that if the building did collapse, there will be only two people injured – my friend and me.

We are lucky that the earthquake passed very quickly, and when everything is fine, we are the last two person got out of the building.

Well. Today, and according to most instructions, we did the right thing, but…. I swear that I firmly believed that we made a wrong decision at that time…

This earthquake reminds me of the same thing. What is your choice the next time? To follow the majority or follow the “right” way?

The Current Earthquake

There is no report about the causality or injures in Wenchuan. I guess it will be another big number. It is too bad. My best wishes that after the recent many accidents in China, people get more experienced and can take more efficient action to rescue the people there.