Story

My First Walk Through the Beichuan Ruins

I was drawn to the Beichuan earthquake memorial because I knew it would be strange but I was not fully prepared for the level of mass tourism on the site. According to a local tourism official I spoke with, fully 3 million domestic tourists a year visit the site. Seeing so many middle-class vacationers in their trendy athleisure clothing with their cameras out walking through a destroyed city was jarring but it was fully intended. The local government hoped that disaster tourism would be a major economic development tool in the region. Despite the grand plans, however, most tourists visit the ruins as a day trip and stay in larger cities farther away or continue on into the mountains to visit Laojunshan National Park (aka "China's Yellowstone"). Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

I was drawn to the Beichuan earthquake memorial because I knew it would be strange but I was not fully prepared for the level of mass tourism on the site. According to a local tourism official I spoke with, fully 3 million domestic tourists a year visit the site. Seeing so many middle-class vacationers in their trendy athleisure clothing with their cameras out walking through a destroyed city was jarring but it was fully intended. The local government hoped that disaster tourism would be a major economic development tool in the region. Despite the grand plans, however, most tourists visit the ruins as a day trip and stay in larger cities farther away or continue on into the mountains to visit Laojunshan National Park (aka "China's Yellowstone"). Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

Visiting the ruins, I expected to find plenty of tourists but also some actual mourners. Qiang Rong (a pseudonym) was the only mourner I came across. I found her in formal attire, burning incense and paper offerings for her father who died in the 2008 earthquake. When Rong finished her ceremony, she walked back towards her SUV crying. Luckily, my translator was able to engage her in conversation. A few days later, I got to interview her near her office in the provincial capital, Chengdu. Her life story was a perfect illustration of the tremendous economic opportunities provided by China since Deng Xiaoping's reforms, but also the tremendous social costs. Rong had dropped out of school and moved to Shanghai for a factory job. Now she had taught herself computers and had a white-collar job in a sales and marketing at an upscale hotel. But the lack of accountability inherent in the Chinese system was part of what put her father's life at risk. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

Visiting the ruins, I expected to find plenty of tourists but also some actual mourners. Qiang Rong (a pseudonym) was the only mourner I came across. I found her in formal attire, burning incense and paper offerings for her father who died in the 2008 earthquake. When Rong finished her ceremony, she walked back towards her SUV crying. Luckily, my translator was able to engage her in conversation. A few days later, I got to interview her near her office in the provincial capital, Chengdu. Her life story was a perfect illustration of the tremendous economic opportunities provided by China since Deng Xiaoping's reforms, but also the tremendous social costs. Rong had dropped out of school and moved to Shanghai for a factory job. Now she had taught herself computers and had a white-collar job in a sales and marketing at an upscale hotel. But the lack of accountability inherent in the Chinese system was part of what put her father's life at risk. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

At Beichuan's earthquake ruins turned museum, sheared-off facades allow tourists to stare right into victims' living rooms. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

At Beichuan's earthquake ruins turned museum, sheared-off facades allow tourists to stare right into victims' living rooms. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

The earthquake was a real-time test of building safety. In this structure, the corner stairwell gave way while the rest of the building remained intact. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

The earthquake was a real-time test of building safety. In this structure, the corner stairwell gave way while the rest of the building remained intact. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

At Beichuan's earthquake ruins turned museum, sheared-off facades allow tourists to stare right into victims' living rooms. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

At Beichuan's earthquake ruins turned museum, sheared-off facades allow tourists to stare right into victims' living rooms. Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.

The plaque at the entry gate brags that “the earthquake relic of old Beichuan County is so far the biggest catastrophic relic originally preserved around the world.” This may seem like a strange Guinness Book distinction to pursue but a walk around the ruins offers a certain defense. We think we know what earthquake ruins look like—buildings crumbled into piles of bricks, bent rebar sticking out of shorn concrete—and there is plenty of that in Old Beichuan. Several leaning towers have been permanently preserved at precarious angles by metal braces added by the museum curators. But there are also far stranger sites that testify to the fact that earthquakes strike along the faultline between the natural environment and the human environment. A four-story stucco building stands completely erect save for one corner, where each floor-plate has slumped onto the one below creating a pattern of cascading downward-pointing triangles. The curved white-brick roof of the seven-story credit union now lodged in the ground at a 30-degree angle like some crashed flying saucer. The China Telecom office is still standing while its metal radio tower lies limp against its façade. The metal Chinese characters once mounted atop the primary school are still attached to the roof but now held aloft in mid-tumble like a freeze-frame waterfall.

The most intriguing spaces are those where buildings defy expectation but the most affecting spaces are those where the private has been rendered public. Several residential buildings held up well while their facades gave way, giving clear views into people’s perfectly preserved apartments. In one home, a bookshelf sits just as it was on that May day in 2008 with the books still on it. You can see right into strangers’ homes in a manner only invited guests ordinarily access. One resident decorated his home with a landscape poster of a mountain rising up behind a blossoming cherry tree. Another living room has a poster of three kittens on it next to a dust-covered red leather easy chair. Walking along the circuit laid out for visitors, I pass an unmarked supermarket, its shelves picked bare soon after the earthquake just discernible through the darkened entryway. At the town’s Suzuki dealership, the grass has grown so high it is hard to see inside it. The only sign out front seems to dissuade the very questions the ruin prompts: “Leave Peace To The Passed.”

The curation feels like a conspiracy to answer all the questions you don’t have and none of the questions you do have. If I'd been wondering whether the collapsed building in front of me was the Beichuan Sub-branch of the Agricultural Development Bank or the Regional Credit Cooperative Association, a plaque will duly answer that question in Chinese and English not to mention Japanese, Korean, and French. And if I wanted to know how much money was recovered from the Credit Cooperative, I'd be duly informed, “the PLA Second Artillery Corps and Jiangsu Fire Forces worked together for nine days and eight nights continuously, and managed to dig out over 6.4 million yuan in cash.” But the most urgent questions—Why did some buildings collapse and others didn’t? What was the panicked scene like in the supermarket just after the quake? Who put up that kitten poster and did she survive?—go unasked and unanswered.