Mourning the victims of the Yushu Earthquake

This collage of front pages comes from Sina microblogger Joysoon (卓越兄).

Today has been declared a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the Yushu Earthquake. As noted on some front pages, the quake’s death toll stands at 2046.

Public entertainment activities have been suspended, flags fly at half-staff, and newspapers have gone black-and-white, just like they did during the three-day memorial for the Wenchuan Earthquake back in 2008.

More cover images can be found on the China Media Project.

The landing pages of major online portals have switched to mostly black-and-white as well:

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But not all websites have put on mourning clothes. Sina microblogger Lin23 writes:

At present (2 am on the National Day of Mourning), not a single one of the country’s major real estate developer’s websites is in mourning….Pan Shiyi, Ren Zhiqiang, Wang Shi, Yu Ying, Ni Jianda, Ding Zuyi — why is this?

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Chipper real estate websites

The post and image attracted a flood of comments griping about shifty real estate developers, although there were also a few dissenting voices (Wang Xiaoshan remarked, “Why do you want to force them to mourn? Developers have problems but this isn’t one”). Developers do not have much of a positive reputation among Chinese netizens. This is due in part to skyrocketing housing prices, but is also a result of the high profile of the industry celebrities namechecked in Li23’s post.

During the aftermath of the Wenchuan Earthquake, for example, Vanke chairman Wang Shi sparked an uproar when his company donated just 2 million RMB and he wrote a memo limiting employee donations to 10 RMB per person.

No one wants that to happen this year. Yesterday’s star-studded, three-and-a-half-hour benefit gala broadcast on CCTV drew a total of 2.175 billion RMB (US$319 million), far more than the 1.514 billion collected at the 2008 benefit for the Wenchuan Earthquake, which had an official death toll of 69,197, left nearly 400,000 people injured, and destroyed the homes of millions.


Update: Criticism is being leveled at Chinese government websites for failing to swap out their ordinary red colorscheme for somber grays. Zhao Mu has a selection of screengrabs under the title “People Online is still red-blooded.” People.com itself has gone gray, but the government channel at Gov.People.com.cn is red as ever.

Twitter user @szh100 writes:

I just called up the www.gov.cn hotline at (010)63070950 and asked why they hadn’t turned black. The woman on the hotline said, turning it black would just be for appearances. I said, that is an excellent answer.

Another striking front page comes from today’s Dongguan Daily:

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