Yee Fong’s Blog

Many of you have shared your thoughts about my experiences in covering the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan. Rest assured I’ve read all of them and I appreciate your kind thoughts for us. J Do continue with your contributions and keep the discussions alive!

My last post was meant to highlight some of the challenges and intricacies in doing our work in China.

There are easier times, though, relatively speaking. After being booted out of Jiulong Town in Mianzhu, we had better luck two days later.

The destination was Xingfu Community, another sprawling resettlement in Du Jiangyan, one of the nearest disaster zones to Chengdu.

It was late night when we first set foot on the ruins of Du Jiangyan, and we were fortunate to have met Mr Long, the kind cabbie that spent a day of his earnings to buy instant noodles and bottled water for the quake survivors, hand-delivered them, and allowed us to film the whole process.

We contacted Mr Long again for our trip back. The small-built, middle-aged man was keen to see how the Du Jiangyan survivors were coping, too.

While we entered Du Jiangyan with little effort shortly after the earthquake, this time we were pulled over by a traffic police at the toll gate on Chengdu Highway leading to Du Jiangyan.

“You are supposed to be carrying a green pass with white text,” The plump guy said he didn’t recognize our blue passes.

“Green? You mean blue? Look at this,” I said in disbelief. I seriously thought he was colour-blind…or maybe I was the one with the eyesight condition??

He showed us the hand and shook his head. “Green, with white text. That was the order.”

It’s clear that he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, make the decision to let us through. So I called an Information Officer from the Sichuan Provincial Government, who asked to speak to the traffic police officer.

She was sounding more frustrated than we were. According to her, the Information department was supposed to have ironed out the details about media access with the traffic police just the day before.

But the traffic police declined to take her call. He finally offered that we should get permission from the Chengdu Traffic Police Command Center.

Nice tip…but there’s no way we were going to turn back to Chengdu!!

I relayed the message to the information officer again, who relayed the message to her director, who promised to contact the Chengdu Traffic Police for a solution…

For an hour, we loitered around the toll gate, watching enviously as vehicles got past their checks and whizzed towards our destination one after another.

We started making small talk with the traffic police – better to have a sense of humour while waiting than to sulk while breathing in the smog.

The traffic police got friendlier with us. Patience does pay off.

During one of his vehicle checks, he beckoned us to show us the green pass in question. Turns out the “approved” persons were indeed holding green passes issued by the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China (No wonder!).

And then, it happened. Two police officers showed up with two media liaison officers in a vehicle from Du Jiangyan to take down our particulars – our access was granted!

But that wasn’t the end.

(Those of you who managed to come this far in reading my ramblings must be feeling rather tired from the whole process. You have my sympathies - I know how that feels.)

You see, Mr Long couldn’t come with us as access was restricted to holders of green CCP passes, blue media passes, Du Jiangyan residents and probably a whole list of other registered vehicles/ dogs/ cats/ plants, etc…

That means we either had to get to Du Jiangyan on foot, or hitchhike our way in.

But all’s not lost …

Because the entourage from Du Jiangyan offered us a ride!

Hurray…

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