Love in the time of earthquakes

Wang Xiaoshan writes a newspaper column in which he uses the classic novel Dream of the Red Mansions as a jumping-off point for discussing current events.

In today’s column, which ran in the Southern Metropolis Daily, Wang asks whether it’s acceptable yet to joke about the 12 May Wenchuan earthquake.

It was too early on the 19th, when New Travel Weekly ran a photo shoot that placed models in ruined buildings, and likewise on the 22nd, when Netease ran a poll that linked football to disaster victims.

As we approach the one-month mark, and as the death toll continues to inch its way upward, is it still too soon?

No one who has not personally experienced disaster can truly identify with what it is like. For example, when the Yellow River bursts its banks in Dream of the Red Mansions, Jia Zheng is busy every day with affairs at the yamen, but Jia Baoyu, who is completely uninvolved, casually asks for a holiday from his teacher Jia Dairu and doesn’t attend class [Chapter 89].

Things are the same even today. A few days ago I received a news item from the Mobile Paper (手机报) which reported the number of deaths in the Wenchuan Earthquake. But that issue of the paper also included the following test quiz and answers:

An earthquake predicts how you will behave when you’re in love: when an earthquake hits, what is your first reaction?

A: Hide under a table;

B: Open the window;

C: Drop everything and run outside;

D: Immobilized with fright.

Analysis: A individuals are guarded; if their love is exposed, they immediately become skittish. They are also particularly nervous about their partner’s infidelity. If they don’t relax, they’ll surely wear themselves out. B individuals are stable lovers. After falling in love, they become even more steadfast, and they are fully convinced of their own attractiveness. C: After falling in love, they’re full of energy, as if all of their mental complications have been untangled. D: Falling in love is like diving head first into a river. Apart from him (or her), they think of nothing else. Their grades and their work crash, and everything else is an absolute mess.

I’m not criticizing the editors of Mobile Paper; in fact, I have a mind to plead their case, because ever since the earthquake, lots of people around me have been grieving day after day. The lighter topics in the Mobile Paper could help to ease people’s emotions. But really, there are lots of different ways to be lighthearted, and to design a quiz around the earthquake at this point in time is a little stupid, to put it mildly.

This calls to mind the Beslan school hostage crisis, when a certain editor at CCTV put up a crawl that read: “How many people died in the Beslan crisis? A: x people; B: y people. China Mobile, China Unicom, and Xiaolingtong users send a message to…”

Later, that editor was reportedly sacked. I personally believe that a sacking was too harsh a punishment, because I figure that he didn’t really mean to mock anyone’s pain. He was just a little more heartless than the Mobile Paper editor, is all.