Shut Up And Do Your Schoolwork....

The recent devastating earthquake in Sichuan province took the young lives of an extraordinary number of young children. From the picture above, one can see that the 10 story hotel in the background was still standing and the kindergarten school on the left appears to still be in good shape. However, one can see in the center, the remains of a primary school and its collapse crushed to death 100's of young children.

Why?

An examination of the collapse of Xinjian Primary School offers a disturbing picture of a calamity that might have been avoided. Many parents say they were told the school was unsafe. Xinjian was poorly built when it opened its doors in 1992, they say, and never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.

Rack up the deaths to culture of corruption that continues to cost hard working Chinese people their lives. The school was built substandard, identified as being substandard years ago, but never received the attention that it deserved. China does has national building code standard intended to withstand earthquakes, but these standards are ignored. Building codes are ignored, typically due to bribes that line the pockets of sleazy officials and to increase the profits to slimy construction companies that have access to these officials.

Chinese government officials take bribes and the citizens that they are responsible for die. That is China today. What a hellhole.

And then there is this....

Mr. Ma saved several children the day of the disaster but cannot shake the memory of one girl. Her leg had been pinned beneath a heavy concrete slab. Two small cranes had failed to free her. Her body temperature was quickly dropping. So Mr. Ma told her father, “She can keep her leg or her life.”

The father was led away. Mr. Ma used a serrated knife he kept in his jeans. He said the job took three cuts across the girl’s shin. “She will hate me when she is older if she has trouble with love,” he said with a grim smile.

He does not know the girl’s name. “I have dreams every night,” he said. “She was very pretty. Very strong.”