When the earthquake happened on May 12, 2008, I was at home in California. For my three previous HODR assessments, I’ve been outside of my home country, without a sense of what kind of media coverage an event garners. Days, even a week after the event, the quake was still very much in the American consciousness. I heard it on NPR while driving, saw it on TV, and tracked it online while checking my email. While I feel like American media coverage of China is often skewed towards the negative, people seemed galvanized by the sheer magnitude of human tragedy that was unfolding. It was a more personal, empathetic side of China than what most people probably think of when it comes to China.
As a Chinese American family we also get CCTV and other Chinese-language news channels in our house, in addition to my dad’s perpetual perusal of Chinese news online. Chest-thumpy coverage of Chinese civilian and government heroes was interspersed with TV benefits featuring fiercely-coiffed Chinese pop stars crooning to orderly lines of flag-waving, uniformed officials and excited school kids.
On May 19th, David made the decision to launch an assessment, and I was immediately on board. Even though I didn’t leave the US for another 10 days, the assessment begins immediately. We track the status of the response, learn about who else is on the ground, and identify target areas through ReliefWeb. We also reach out to NGO contacts with whom we’ve worked in the past to establish links and email personal contacts in-country to see what kind of networks we can tap into there. Meanwhile, I prepared my “to-go kit” (first aid, phones and electronics, HODR wear, documents, travel gear, etc.) and chatted online with John, my partner for this assessment, en route from Nepal.
My parents were skeptical. Oh, the government will take care of it all, my mom said, watch and see, they’ll build it back better than it was before. No one can compare to China! Yeah fine, you mainlander, I thought. My dad was concerned as well, but chose a different tact – shouldn’t you be applying to grad school? Umm, I already bought a ticket. Sorry. Ciao!
I landed in Beijing on May 30th. My brief time there included a meeting with iboughtashelter.com, a hotpot dinner with Kirsty, a HODR alum from Bangladesh (sausages were translated on the menu as “intestine kiss,” ew!), and my Beijing staple: savory pancakes and dumplings with my aunt and uncle. Apparently, they told me, Sharon Stone had said something about the earthquake being karmic payback for China’s actions in Tibet. They were confused – shouldn’t people try to offer support, or just not say anything, they wondered? Uh, yeah, I said, no one in America even watches her movies. I was surprised how hurt I was on their behalf, that a few careless words of some random lady on the other side of the globe could cause them to be upset. I’ve never had an opinion about Sharon Stone!
I started experiencing problems with my email and internet access early on. John remarked that my emails coming out of China all seemed to be delayed, and Marc wondered why I was keeping him out of the loop. China has the “Great Firewall,” which blocks various websites and most blogs to web users. Finding myself unable to load Gmail one day, HODR email the next, I developed paranoia that China was watching me and shutting me down. This coincided with Marc’s visa rejection. I stopped posting to my personal blog, thinking that an impatient comment might get my IP address further restricted. Inexplicably, I could still pull up some seemingly touchy sites (Tibet info?) while not being able to load innocuous ones (popular Chinese snack foods?), no matter what proxy I used. I’ve developed a new theory, that the government wasn’t watching me; they simply apply their firewall at random thus creating paranoia which frankly, is a good strategy. Well played, Chinese government, well played.
I moved on to Chengdu on June 1st. A couple NGOs were already at Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel, where we’ve stayed the entire duration of this assessment, and more still were at the Chengdu Bookworm, the expat bookshop that’s been our office in the city. If you’re ever in Chengdu, I highly recommend both.
China has been engulfed in a wave of supportive, China-pride sentiment since the earthquake; one example is the rapid proliferation of “I love China” t-shirts everywhere. Men, women, children - I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a dog happily trotting around in an “I love China” sweater. The shirts are often white, laid out similarly to the ubiquitous “I (heart) NY” shirts. The solid red outline of the country might be printed in the center, or a red heart with the Chinese stars (laid out as on the Chinese flag), or the date “512” emblazoned in bold, maybe with the Beijing Olympics logo or rings added somewhere as an afterthought, with a panda thrown in for good measure as well. Design restraint doesn’t seem to be much of a concept here.
Initially I was incredibly energized by the NGOs getting started, the outpouring of support from regular Chinese citizens, and the perceived atmosphere of change and openness in the government. I felt there was a tremendous opportunity in the pool of Chinese students, Chinese professionals and companies looking to get involved, and robust expat community, in addition to loyal HODR alumni chomping at the bit to get dirty again. Yet, I still felt wary of operating as a foreigner in China. Everything I’d read and heard was that NGO work is a fledgling concept here, and that there is incredible ambiguity and inconsistency in working here.
Our usual approach to assessment is to visit sites in the field, make courtesy calls to local officials, and have interviews with government, NGOs, and citizens. Somehow I got it into my head that I needed to roll low-profile, avoid authorities, and network heavily with international groups. Wow, completely wrong! After two days of field assessments, I’d been stopped by police twice, instructed not to take photos, escorted out of an area by a police car, and been asked for my passport and visa (I lied and said I didn’t have it with me). I also hadn’t seen a single INGO working on the ground – only a Muslim Hands truck which passed by, shaded windows rolled all the way up. I realized that if I wasn’t meeting authorities head-on and concurrently feeling out permission to operate while assessing sites, then what I was doing amounted to sight-seeing. And so I went back to the original HODR M.O. – courtesy calls and meetings with officials. Duh.
John arrived on June 5th, and after a few more days of field assessments, our focus shifted to securing “permission” (whatever that meant) to work in our target areas. It was a futile goose chase to do this ourselves; village chiefs referred us to city officials, city officials hemmed and hawed and waved us to provincial authorities, provincial authorities avoided eye contact while stammering something vague about the Chinese Red Cross or the city-level officials, and then city officials shrugged and pointed to Beijing. Our tenacious translator Monica shook her head angrily after a day of rejection, “it’s such bullshits!”
One of the ways that we try and establish our “street cred” is by name-dropping some of the large INGOs we’ve worked with in the past. One problem though – UNICEF, Salvation Army, Save the Children – the average Chinese person has never heard of any of these. (Interestingly, a ton of people know WWF. Well played, WWF, for using the panda as your worldwide logo! Well played.) And so we shifted our strategy to looking for Chinese NGOs to partner with. The initial round of Chinese NGOs we found were energetic and eager, but rather inexperienced. Few had active earthquake response projects, and while interested in partnering with us, they simply didn’t realize the challenges involved with foreign NGOs. Invitations to meet and visit their sites slowly yielded to the realization that their tentative relationship with governments could be adversely affected by our presence, and they all backed away from working with us.
We got a taste of what it would be like to work in China when we went on a test build of an iboughtashelter.com shelter in the village of Baiguocun. I described this briefly in our second assessment update on hodr.org. The shelter is a dome-like tunnel framed with a mesh of split bamboo, wrapped in a sheath of durable, laminated tarpaulin that could last at least one year. Initially bewildered, the villagers started to rally; a crowd quickly gathered and villagers scattered and returned with random antiquated, rusty old tools which of course worked better that our shiny new picks and shovels. Amazing fun and energy! Four hours later, we’d finished the prototype. When were we coming to move in, asked the villagers? Oops. While they thought that the shelter was durable strong and better than what they currently were living it, they said it simply required too much time and too many people to set up. This would have been a great HODR project – our volunteers could work with individual families to set these up as shelters, community spaces, harvest storage, etc. In the end, the villagers of Baiguocun rigged up the shelter with a satellite dish and electricity; it’s where the people congregate to watch TV, play mahjong, and socialize, assured of its strength and ability to keep out the rain.
We conducted our assessments largely with the help of local guides/translators. Sichuan has its own dialect, and once people get going, I can’t make head or tail of it with my Mandarin. All of our translators can speak both Mandarin and Sichuan. Kipling, pictured with kids at the top of our fourth assessment update on hodr.org, was our main translator. He organized, strategized, and has a father who is a human GPS system. Monica balanced her exam and study schedule with persistent follow-up phone calls to everyone we ever talked to. Lily helped us source materials in Chengdu and translate documents and emails. I had fun with Una, who chatted with me in French and then translated to Chinese. Jackie would listen patiently to our ramblings and then ask, “ok, what’s your point?” thus helping us to streamline our message. Alex and I would get caught up in Mandarin clarifications to each other, leaving John in our linguistic dust. All of these people were critical to the progress of our assessment.
Rolling around in taxis in Chengdu was a good way to see how the earthquake was still very much in the public consciousness. There are large red banners everywhere, boldly lettered with encouraging and patriotic slogans. Every cabbie had their radio turned to talk radio, discussing some aspect of the quake or the response. One female host recalled how minutes after the quake, she started receiving text messages from a listener in a severely affected area. Dramatically, the host set up her program, at which point she called the mobile number and had a voice conversation with her mystery lifeline…which was actually pretty anti-climactic. I often heard one radio spot, a gallant male and empathetic female voice taking turns orating lofty mottos, culminating in a chorus chanting “Jia you!” (Sounds like "ja yo!") It’s the Chinese way of saying “go!” in English, or “allez!” in French. Wenchuan, jia you! Sichuan, jia you! Zhong guo, jia you! Wenchuan, go! (Wenchuan was the epicenter of the quake.) Sichuan, go! CHINA, GO! John really liked this, and would randomly exclaim “jia you!” when walking around or thinking to himself.
Another challenge was in trying to communicate our model, programs, and the evolution of our work to officials and other NGOs. Clearing rubble? Oh, the army is doing that. Are they doing it now? No. Do you know when they will? No. Don’t people need to clear a space to build their temporary house? Yes, but the government is building temporary houses. Will the government build temporary houses in this village? No. So what’s your plan? The government hasn’t told us yet. Oof! So they’d change the line of questioning. Where are your experts? What kind of training program do you offer your volunteers? What’s your budget? What can you build? We’ve encountered this everywhere we’ve worked before, but usually we’re able to explain how HODR fills a different niche. Here, we couldn’t get around the narrow mentality, which frustrated me immensely. Effective response is about simultaneously pursuing different kinds of relief activity. Of course the government takes care of large-scale needs; NGOs are meant to be complementary. The value of HODR’s work can’t be fully expressed through this bottom line type of thinking.
In China, charitable donations are public, and therefore quite scrutinized. Some companies sent office-wide memos recommending how much employees should give, depending on their position in the company. Celebrities were chastised (and thrashed by China’s voracious online community) for not giving “enough.” In the west, charitable giving is often a private, or at least a quiet affair. Here, TV news kept a vigilant update like a PBS pledge-a-thon. At the local Starbucks, the “community board” maintained its cheerful scrapbook aesthetic, but was carefully arranged with photos of their staff dropping cash donations into a collection box. Each staff member was posed with their ¥100 bills fanned out, so that you could see how many they were giving.
There is some legitimacy to the singular “the government will take care of it” mentality that people have. This government does do a lot for its people. It has tremendous resources and it knows how to mobilize them. On my first day out in the field, the highway was packed with trucks transporting prefab housing materials to far flung locations. In addition to the massive 10,000 module community that stretched out like a sea, soldiers also dropped off a neat stack of 21 units in a rural hamlet I visited. Impressive coverage. I won’t go off on the considerable issues and needs that remain – credit should simply be given where it’s due.
In other places HODR has worked, we’ve been able to find someone who puts their faith in us, or at least is open to having us start work, see what we’re doing, and then evaluate. And if we just get that opportunity, I’m supremely confident of our ability to perform and impress. I’m wary of starting off our relationship with an official by offering to build a temporary medical center. What comes next? Part of the beauty of HODR is that we start off by simply offering our hands, our volunteers. From this, we build a relationship with the community, start work on more complex and involved projects, and then we’re recognized for both the hard and soft benefits that our volunteers contribute. Here, it’s quite difficult to get that chance.
Things never seemed to line up quite right. The government might allow us to work in one area, but there was simply not enough infrastructure to be able to support a volunteer base without being a burden on the local community. In another place, the community vibe was great but the road leading to the town was buried in daily mudslides that would persist through the rainy season. In yet another, the potential work was a good fit but local officials were about as interested in us as Tim is interested in wearing shoes.
As our time in Chengdu dragged on, we fell into the habit of having ice cream every day after lunch. There’s a shop down the street from Sim’s which has 10 ice cream coolers, nothing else, and a constantly evolving selection of bars and cones to choose from. John has an uncanny knack for consistently choosing terrible flavors every day. It’s been so long now that I think he aspires to it. If I may say so myself, I choose pretty good ones.
A significant disappointment was that foreign volunteers were viewed as a liability to the government officials and Chinese NGOs that we met. John and I felt strong pressure to restrict the numbers of foreigners (and therefore HODR alumni) who could participate. This was troubling, since the global mix of our volunteer community is one of the things that produces memorable exchanges with the community served, part of what’s unique and fun about HODR. I have absolutely no problem with a majority Chinese-volunteer event, was certainly excited at the prospect, but was disappointed that we would need to explicitly gate foreign participation to get our start. Marc and I have always been adamant in our open, no minimum time commitment, no required skills policy. This would be a major change.
Last week, I met Marc in Beijing and we spent a few days in meetings. It seemed like the perfect time to make these connections. Enough time had lapsed since the quake for some groups to get their programs started and for things to stabilize. Overall, these Beijing contacts operated at a higher level with better government relations, reacted positively to our model, and offered creative ideas on how to get started. But we still faced the same fundamental problems to launching a project: access to the area, government permission, and sensitivity to foreigners.
I know of one NGO doing work similar to us that’s up and running. CODE is a Japanese group staying at Sim’s, which sends teams of Japanese volunteers to a rural village (where that 21-unit temporary housing I mentioned is) to do rubble work. Every evening they burst out of their van in a cloud of dust, looking tired and happy. I feel kind of jealous, but also gratified to know that our kind of work is quite valued and appreciated at the local level. They say that the reception to their work in the village is tremendous. Now they’re starting to look at housing projects. Being based in Chengdu allows them to operate on this interim basis; because we try to set up our operation in the field, we have to be more conservative.
In the end, we did have an opportunity to partner with a Chinese NGO (NGODPC) already at work in a community that would have been a good starting place for HODR. They even have ten volunteers operating out of a tent base camp, much the same as HODR’s style. But as I wrote in our conclusion on hodr.org, we have a responsibility to provide a stable base and transparent operations to our volunteers, domestic and international. The relations we had in place didn’t give us the confidence to do this over a sustained period.
I often grapple with my Chinese identity, especially when I’m in China. People are puzzled by the juxtaposition of my self-conscious, lumpy Mandarin with my Chinese face, and their eyes are inevitably drawn to my scuffed sneakers (atypical footwear here). In each of my previous trips here, I’ve found parts of Chinese culture that overwhelm me, that make me lose my patience at this seemingly soulless, spitting, elbowing, loud, overwhelming crush of people and crazy lateral traffic motion and smog and development and narrow-mindedness and those terrible ankle-length nylon socks that women wear and blarghh!
And yet this time, I feel quite enamored with the place. I experienced incredible kindness and generosity from the people I aspired to help. I enjoyed candid, intelligent conversation with our tireless team of guides and translators. I respect the experience, insight, and energy of the NGO people (mostly Chinese) with whom I met. And I’m impressed with the ambition and dedication of the Chinese people. It was never difficult to motivate myself to keep going, to keep finding contacts and meetings and places to get excited about. It was difficult to know when to call it, to let it go. So many people were excited by what we proposed to do, were looking for a different way to help. My experience over the past six weeks has been so positive. I might go get one of those t-shirts.
And so, we make our preparations to leave China. I’m incredibly disappointed to not be able to launch a HODR project here, but I feel overwhelmingly touched, heartened, and exhausted by the interactions we’ve experienced here. Now I wish the Chinese people, ChineseNGO/operating INGO community, and Chinese government the best of luck for the continued earthquake recovery, and place my faith in the incremental, perpetual changes for the better which I do indeed see taking place in China. Zhong guo, jia you!
Stefanie
Thursday, July 10, 2008
By decision in the 15th round, no deployment - John
An endless supply of cigarettes were drawn from shirt pockets and from behind ears. For five hours straight most of my new friends from the local communist party of Tong Jian village were either smoking a cigarette, or lighting up a new one. Our walking tour took us through the low foothills of northern Sichuan province, a mere ten kilometers from the border with Saanxi province. To my surprise, we were a lot further from Chendgu than I had imagined.
Lunch was prepared in typical fashion for party officials hosting a guest. In the known history of Tong Jian village, one other foreigner had passed through. He two was invited to dine around a table packed to the edges with dish after dish of spicy Sichuan food while party officials undoubtedly asked him about his home country. Attempting to direct the conversation toward the degree of known damage to buildings and infrastructure, I was redirected by inquiries by the officials wanting to know if my golden hair and blue eyes meant I was handsome in my home country.
As I continued to assess the village with the Head Chief, the Deputy Head Chief, the Deputy Secretary Chief, the General Deputy Secretary and several other flamboyantly titled men, the kindness of these villagers reminded me of some of the times in Peru and Bangladesh that nearly brought me to tears. Sometimes, a man would rush out of a bush or from a construction site in tattered and dirty clothes, and began distributing cigarettes from his own shirt pocket to the party officials and often tried to give me two. Trying to explain that I don’t smoke was a foreign concept here. But so was my golden hair…I had the same thoughts I have had many times at HODR projects, that is, how can these people be so generous and seemingly so content with their lives when they live in such poor conditions? It has been easy to get caught up in city life again since we are based in Chengdu, but being reminded yet again that where life is simple, it is often sweetest.
A “minpien” (business card) goes a long way in China. A local contact, Peter, who enjoys near celebrity status within the ranks of the NGO that he works for has been helpful in navigating the complexities of working for an NGO in China. The minpien is to be given to the receiver standing up, and with two hands. The information should be facing the receiver. When receiving the minpien, one should receive it standing up, with two hands, slightly lowering your head. This particular detail is easy to master.
We have made over 130 personal contacts, visited 25 potential job sites, contacted 48 different NGOs, businesses and other groups, and 21 government departments, and we’ve held 42 meetings. We still haven’t been able to get to work, and that is due to other complexities a bit more difficult to navigate than giving and receiving a business card.
Quite simply, there is no infrastructure in which NGOs have to work. The government has no infrastructure for dealing with NGOs. One of the 42 organization we have been in contact with, Heart to Heart has worked in China for over 10 years. It took them 10 years to build up the necessary trust and relationship with the right government officials in order for them to receive official permission to operate in China. In addition, Heart to Heart has a healthy budget of several million dollars, and supplies professional doctors where they are in need. The wind would appear to be at their back. Not in China. Instead, Heart to Heart has packed up and gone home after a month of service in the quake area. This is not an easy NGO environment for even the most established.
In contast to H2H’s apparent solid foundation almost all Chinese NGOs are both new and unofficial themselves. Some had preexisting government connections which have allowed an increased ability to operate, many are still building these relationships themselves. I realize that it is a big ask to expect a Chinese organization or business to stick its neck out, risking its own connections and authority to operate to let us piggy back on those relationships to do our work. We have often been able to establish very good relations with a Chinese NGO or foundation, but when it comes to the small (but important) realities of operating, many back away. We need a local partner to help us get the proper paperwork for even the simplest of situations. A simple example is the police road blocks around the disaster area. They are random and sporadic, but none the less, they are there. An official road pass is needed to pass these blocks, especially as foreigners. On occasion, the officer is too busy sending a text message to pay close attention, but we have been stopped and told to return to Chengdu a number of times. Do not pass Go, definitely do not collect 200.
The problem is, even those individuals or organizations that have road passes don’t really know how they have them, or who to talk to in order to get one. If we are lucky enough to get a name and number of some gov’t official, the official is quick to pass us off to another official, often in a different city, with no relationship to the official we had originally been speaking to. The normal response is that “we don’t have the authority to make these kinds of decisions.” We’ve also spent days “official chasing” in person. The reaction is usually the same, they listen blankly while we talk about our work, then pass us on to someone else who has no authority either. Officials seem to think that they are imparting valuable knowledge on where we can get permission by suggesting that we contact the Sichuan Foreign Affairs department. When we explain that we have contacted that department in person, by phone, by fax and by email and again, we are told that they do not have the ability to make these decisions, they just drop their eyes to the ground and say that we should contact the Sichuan F.A department.
Cold calling Chinese officials and showing up unannounced at their office or place of work is not the proper way of conducting business here. Despite the fact that this is an incredibly devastating disaster requiring extraordinary actions by everyone involved, most officials are unwilling to step outside the ordinary boundaries of their job. There is a very strong and real fear of doing something wrong, and punishment from above is severe.
Our most robust strategy has been to really develop a relationship with local and national Chinese NGOS and foundations. I believe that they are receptive, willing, and eager NGOs who’s staff are people like myself, that do exist here. The desire to get to work, to apply the resources of the NGO and help people is as strong here as anywhere else. Finding that NGO or that foundation, or that group of businesses takes time. A group that is small enough to understand the realities and difficulties of putting hands to work in the disaster zone, but has the right level of authority to do so, is a rarity. Our most recent round of meetings has lent our most promising connections yet. This week, we had two invitations to spend extended periods of time in the company of partner Chinese NGO’s at their job sites. Both were interested in our ability to apply the HODR model in the communities where they are already semi-established. We thought this might be a breakthrough, but the reality is has been another high point in this assessment followed by the unfortunate low point marked by the reality and the difficulty of NGO work in China.
We have an invitation to install a few of us at the DPC camp in Wudu village and begin our work. We could do that. However, there is always the looming risk that someone from above will come shut down our operation. I don’t believe that DPC or most other NGOS realize the amount of work we are capable of doing by hand and I don’t believe they understand the bond that we ultimately form with the community. I fear that they might fear our presence once we were in full swing. We can slowly slowly grow our presence in Wudu, to the point of possibly declaring it a project. But at what point can we declare it a project? Is it after the first week when there are 6 of us who have worked unhindered for the week? Is it after the second week when there are 10 of us who haven’t yet been stopped by the police? Or is it after the third week when we begin putting volunteers into the kids center and start building a temporary home with 15 volunteers at our base?
I feel that these are the questions and risks that an individual or small group of individuals can take, but can HODR take these risks?
Well in the immediate future, you may find me and a few Chinese friends with some hammers, taking down some homes and building a temp home or two until we get kicked out of the area and asked to leave China.
I hope to see some of you guys in the near future.
John
Lunch was prepared in typical fashion for party officials hosting a guest. In the known history of Tong Jian village, one other foreigner had passed through. He two was invited to dine around a table packed to the edges with dish after dish of spicy Sichuan food while party officials undoubtedly asked him about his home country. Attempting to direct the conversation toward the degree of known damage to buildings and infrastructure, I was redirected by inquiries by the officials wanting to know if my golden hair and blue eyes meant I was handsome in my home country.
As I continued to assess the village with the Head Chief, the Deputy Head Chief, the Deputy Secretary Chief, the General Deputy Secretary and several other flamboyantly titled men, the kindness of these villagers reminded me of some of the times in Peru and Bangladesh that nearly brought me to tears. Sometimes, a man would rush out of a bush or from a construction site in tattered and dirty clothes, and began distributing cigarettes from his own shirt pocket to the party officials and often tried to give me two. Trying to explain that I don’t smoke was a foreign concept here. But so was my golden hair…I had the same thoughts I have had many times at HODR projects, that is, how can these people be so generous and seemingly so content with their lives when they live in such poor conditions? It has been easy to get caught up in city life again since we are based in Chengdu, but being reminded yet again that where life is simple, it is often sweetest.
A “minpien” (business card) goes a long way in China. A local contact, Peter, who enjoys near celebrity status within the ranks of the NGO that he works for has been helpful in navigating the complexities of working for an NGO in China. The minpien is to be given to the receiver standing up, and with two hands. The information should be facing the receiver. When receiving the minpien, one should receive it standing up, with two hands, slightly lowering your head. This particular detail is easy to master.
We have made over 130 personal contacts, visited 25 potential job sites, contacted 48 different NGOs, businesses and other groups, and 21 government departments, and we’ve held 42 meetings. We still haven’t been able to get to work, and that is due to other complexities a bit more difficult to navigate than giving and receiving a business card.
Quite simply, there is no infrastructure in which NGOs have to work. The government has no infrastructure for dealing with NGOs. One of the 42 organization we have been in contact with, Heart to Heart has worked in China for over 10 years. It took them 10 years to build up the necessary trust and relationship with the right government officials in order for them to receive official permission to operate in China. In addition, Heart to Heart has a healthy budget of several million dollars, and supplies professional doctors where they are in need. The wind would appear to be at their back. Not in China. Instead, Heart to Heart has packed up and gone home after a month of service in the quake area. This is not an easy NGO environment for even the most established.
In contast to H2H’s apparent solid foundation almost all Chinese NGOs are both new and unofficial themselves. Some had preexisting government connections which have allowed an increased ability to operate, many are still building these relationships themselves. I realize that it is a big ask to expect a Chinese organization or business to stick its neck out, risking its own connections and authority to operate to let us piggy back on those relationships to do our work. We have often been able to establish very good relations with a Chinese NGO or foundation, but when it comes to the small (but important) realities of operating, many back away. We need a local partner to help us get the proper paperwork for even the simplest of situations. A simple example is the police road blocks around the disaster area. They are random and sporadic, but none the less, they are there. An official road pass is needed to pass these blocks, especially as foreigners. On occasion, the officer is too busy sending a text message to pay close attention, but we have been stopped and told to return to Chengdu a number of times. Do not pass Go, definitely do not collect 200.
The problem is, even those individuals or organizations that have road passes don’t really know how they have them, or who to talk to in order to get one. If we are lucky enough to get a name and number of some gov’t official, the official is quick to pass us off to another official, often in a different city, with no relationship to the official we had originally been speaking to. The normal response is that “we don’t have the authority to make these kinds of decisions.” We’ve also spent days “official chasing” in person. The reaction is usually the same, they listen blankly while we talk about our work, then pass us on to someone else who has no authority either. Officials seem to think that they are imparting valuable knowledge on where we can get permission by suggesting that we contact the Sichuan Foreign Affairs department. When we explain that we have contacted that department in person, by phone, by fax and by email and again, we are told that they do not have the ability to make these decisions, they just drop their eyes to the ground and say that we should contact the Sichuan F.A department.
Cold calling Chinese officials and showing up unannounced at their office or place of work is not the proper way of conducting business here. Despite the fact that this is an incredibly devastating disaster requiring extraordinary actions by everyone involved, most officials are unwilling to step outside the ordinary boundaries of their job. There is a very strong and real fear of doing something wrong, and punishment from above is severe.
Our most robust strategy has been to really develop a relationship with local and national Chinese NGOS and foundations. I believe that they are receptive, willing, and eager NGOs who’s staff are people like myself, that do exist here. The desire to get to work, to apply the resources of the NGO and help people is as strong here as anywhere else. Finding that NGO or that foundation, or that group of businesses takes time. A group that is small enough to understand the realities and difficulties of putting hands to work in the disaster zone, but has the right level of authority to do so, is a rarity. Our most recent round of meetings has lent our most promising connections yet. This week, we had two invitations to spend extended periods of time in the company of partner Chinese NGO’s at their job sites. Both were interested in our ability to apply the HODR model in the communities where they are already semi-established. We thought this might be a breakthrough, but the reality is has been another high point in this assessment followed by the unfortunate low point marked by the reality and the difficulty of NGO work in China.
We have an invitation to install a few of us at the DPC camp in Wudu village and begin our work. We could do that. However, there is always the looming risk that someone from above will come shut down our operation. I don’t believe that DPC or most other NGOS realize the amount of work we are capable of doing by hand and I don’t believe they understand the bond that we ultimately form with the community. I fear that they might fear our presence once we were in full swing. We can slowly slowly grow our presence in Wudu, to the point of possibly declaring it a project. But at what point can we declare it a project? Is it after the first week when there are 6 of us who have worked unhindered for the week? Is it after the second week when there are 10 of us who haven’t yet been stopped by the police? Or is it after the third week when we begin putting volunteers into the kids center and start building a temporary home with 15 volunteers at our base?
I feel that these are the questions and risks that an individual or small group of individuals can take, but can HODR take these risks?
Well in the immediate future, you may find me and a few Chinese friends with some hammers, taking down some homes and building a temp home or two until we get kicked out of the area and asked to leave China.
I hope to see some of you guys in the near future.
John
Sidelined - Marc
Barcelona, Spain
It was a mad scramble from the airport to the Chinese consulate in Barcelona. I had minimal time to get passport photos taken, find an internet café (to download a copy of my hotel reservation- which hadn’t arrived prior to my flight from Italy), and find the embassy. But, the next thing I knew I was in the queue……waiting, standing on the street for exactly 2hours 20 minutes before I was in front of an official. An official who promptly told me I needed to apply for my visa in my home country. He said that Beijing was constantly changing the guidelines and they could not help me. It mattered not what I said, the answer was “I cannot do here.”
I had complete confidence in Stefanie Chang, who would be first in, and John Hancock who would join her in the first week. Who better to lead the assessment, what better opportunity to follow the HODR model and have them step up into a leadership role. But how difficult it was to be sidelined, not there in the thick of it. A weeklong sail around the Mediterranean with Ian, a HODR alum from Peru and Bangladesh, would have to do.
Boston, MA
So, without a Chinese visa in hand I returned to the USA after having been away for 10 months (again). The plan was for me to use a visa expeditor for my application in Washington, DC whilst I attended our scheduled HODR June meetings. Me-mum met me in Boston and happily the two of us were welcomed at Tom Taylor’s (TTT) house. As much as I wanted to already be in China, it was great to be with the HODR team as the conversation formed ideas helping to shape our organization.
You know those scenes in the movies where the actor seems to stand still and the depth of field of the backdrop changes, almost as if it is rushing forward? Where everything looks roughly the same, but really, everything has changed? That was me in the front room of TTT’s house. I had a phone in my hand and my visa expeditor was on the other end of the line. He was telling me my visa had been rejected! He said, “your employer is H. O. D. R. what is that?” Without waiting for an answer he went on “you see right now it is a very sensitive situation in China” and the rest became a blur of words as my head spun with the implications. Rejected? #@&%, oh S%^&, that’s bad, really bad.
How do you get around that? Sidelined, again (maybe even relegated to an observer watching via youtube!).
David Campbell (DC) and I had daily skype calls with Stef and John and within the first 2 weeks a couple of things became apparent: 1. If we were to operate a HODR program in China the volunteers would be predominately (if not exclusively) Chinese. 2. The only way we could operate would be with approval, on some level, from the government. The first item, personally, took a little time to adjust to. It was hard for me to think of an international deployment without someone from Ireland or the UK or New Zealand or Cameroon or Canada able to join. I could rationalize it out by thinking of our volunteer base in Biloxi consisting of mainly Americans, so it seemed appropriate that an event in China is filled with Chinese. I had numerous conversations with HODR alum and even current volunteers in Project Cedar Rapids and they all felt that it was not an issue. But, I still turned it over and over. The second item was more problematic, access was elusive. Even the ability to determine who could give us permission for access was a mystery. Stef and John had meeting after meeting (unusual style for HODR, but these were unusual circumstances!) and finally hit upon a scheme of partnering with a Chinese NGO that had permission to operate. We would operate under their umbrella thus avoiding the need for a separate approval to be bestowed upon HODR. Seemed easy enough.
In China the team worked at local access and in the USA we pondered my visa issues. We made a trip to a local Chinese restaurant to have them decipher the characters written on my original application. It was here over a yummy dim-sum buffet (acclimatizing?) that we realized I hadn’t been rejected – I just hadn’t been approved! The embassy made a very deft maneuver; they sent my application back with no visa and the explanation was that I needed to apply in my home consular district. This sounds plausible until you talk to the visa experts, who tell you they had never heard of this. The experts say they fulfill applications for all 50 states. We thought the visa bureau had singled me out because I listed my employer as HODR and international disaster response personnel were not needed or wanted in Sichuan. If they want to shuffle me off to someone else – then fine. I will re-apply to my “home consular district” in Chicago. I found a helpful expeditor in based in Chicago and sent my application off with a few changes. 1. I was no longer flying to Chengdu (the largest city near the epicenter) now my flight only took me to Beijing. 2. I no longer had a reservation to stay in Chengdu, now I was booked in at a hostel in Beijing. 3. I no longer was applying for a 1 year multiple entry visa, now it was a 30 day single entry. 4. My employer was listed as Hands On as opposed to HODR (a little more obscure when you do a Google search!). With fingers crossed DC and I continued to skype with Stef and John daily to hear of their efforts.
Palo, Ia
It was a hectic time as I made a quick trip to Project Cedar Rapids where I stumbled around in an unfamiliar environment (USA HODR deployment!) and attempted to be of assistance to Ops Dir. Bill Driscoll, Jr. It is difficult to be in the middle of so much destruction but also moving to be around so many people motivated to help, it is the same world over, disaster after disaster. It was during my 1st 24hours in Palo that I received confirmation of my Chinese visa. Hurray!!! Off the sidelines!
Beijing, China
Stef and John set up a flurry of meetings for my 2 day stay in Beijing and I was fortunate to have Stef join me. We learned in the Philippines that without on the ground experience the meetings are not as productive. Within 2 hours of my flight landing I was meeting with the Director of Social Science Institute at Beijing University, Madame Zhang. It was my introduction to the difficulties faced by Stef and John for the past 2 weeks. In the first 4 minutes it was evident that she was unwilling (or unable, but I think more the prior) to help us, she didn’t even make eye contact (ostrich syndrome?). After a rather futile 30 minutes we excused ourselves and left for a dinner meeting.
Happily, the next two days were filled with great meetings and opportunities for partnerships, so much so that Stef left Beijing 1 day early to join a team on one of their assessments in Sichuan. It was with high spirits that I flew from the country's capital into the hard-hit province of Sichuan (along with the world’s tallest man – who was coincidentally on my flight. At 7’9’’ when he stooped in the aircraft his shoulders touched the ceiling!).
Sichuan, China
The devastation was as complete as any I have seen anywhere. Most of the homes/buildings are made of cement block or brick and the earthquake had been strong enough and long enough to knock almost all of them down. Those that remained were so badly damaged that they were no longer suitable for habitation. It was much like Pisco except not adobe structures and much like Sawit but on a more massive scale. The hillsides suffering from quake driven landslides looked like a huge hand had dragged its fingernails down them to scrape the vegetation away exposing the bare sandy soil underneath The asphalt roads were not too bad, but the more common cement roads were a complete mess, broken, upheaved, and somewhat passable in a bone jarring way. I walked among the residents of Wudu village and was moved by their spirit, their resiliency, their willingness to laugh. They had started to pick themselves up, to act on their own behalf, not waiting for someone to do for them. They had been told they would not receive a placement in a relocation camp, they would instead get 2,000 RMB to build a transitional shelter. They acknowledged that the help we offered had value.
But, the optimism carry over from the Beijing meetings was short lived. The roller-coaster ride that HODR had been on for 5 weeks resumed (I was just added to the car) as the assessment that Stef returned from was another dead-end. The same issues continued to surface even with willing Chinese partners: 1. Local government unwillingness to yield access for our model. 2. Local government unable to see value in our starting point service.
The other observation was………the response of the government.
Again, I have never seen anything like it. It is now 58 days after the event and the government has built 1.64 million (MILLION) temporary housing units! We viewed one prefabricated relocation community that had to contain maybe 6,000 units! But they are not all huge cities on flat open spaces – they were also found in very rural hillside areas, tucked into a recently flattened space accommodating 150 units. The technique is common to China, they house their construction workers and coal miners like this. It is steel framed room with a prefabricated wall and roof of Styrofoam insulation sandwiched between corrugated metal. They have a door and windows and are wired for electricity. They build them in rectangular blocks where they share common sidewalls. The blocks are all laid out with cement walkways, drainage, and communal latrines with running water nearby. You could see the work at various levels of completion, ongoing everywhere. Impressive, mighty impressive.
I had 3 meetings at the village level. At each one of those meetings I was told that the central government had issued a new mandate to “collectivise the homes.” The individual farmers will be moved to central, high-rise, apartment style homes. This would be a better use of the land and would allow the gov’t to have tighter control over the construction techniques used in the rebuilding.
It is not because of the government’s ability to respond, nor its plan to centralize, but because of its proclivity to both welcome assistance and deny it that we have decided to not deploy. We have found an environment that is not conducive for the type of program that HODR can offer. I honestly believe that we can morph a HODR deployment into anything we want it to be. I feel open to the possibility that a HODR deployment may not look like anything we have ever created before, but the at the core there are two things that must exist:
Marc
It was a mad scramble from the airport to the Chinese consulate in Barcelona. I had minimal time to get passport photos taken, find an internet café (to download a copy of my hotel reservation- which hadn’t arrived prior to my flight from Italy), and find the embassy. But, the next thing I knew I was in the queue……waiting, standing on the street for exactly 2hours 20 minutes before I was in front of an official. An official who promptly told me I needed to apply for my visa in my home country. He said that Beijing was constantly changing the guidelines and they could not help me. It mattered not what I said, the answer was “I cannot do here.”
I had complete confidence in Stefanie Chang, who would be first in, and John Hancock who would join her in the first week. Who better to lead the assessment, what better opportunity to follow the HODR model and have them step up into a leadership role. But how difficult it was to be sidelined, not there in the thick of it. A weeklong sail around the Mediterranean with Ian, a HODR alum from Peru and Bangladesh, would have to do.
Boston, MA
So, without a Chinese visa in hand I returned to the USA after having been away for 10 months (again). The plan was for me to use a visa expeditor for my application in Washington, DC whilst I attended our scheduled HODR June meetings. Me-mum met me in Boston and happily the two of us were welcomed at Tom Taylor’s (TTT) house. As much as I wanted to already be in China, it was great to be with the HODR team as the conversation formed ideas helping to shape our organization.
You know those scenes in the movies where the actor seems to stand still and the depth of field of the backdrop changes, almost as if it is rushing forward? Where everything looks roughly the same, but really, everything has changed? That was me in the front room of TTT’s house. I had a phone in my hand and my visa expeditor was on the other end of the line. He was telling me my visa had been rejected! He said, “your employer is H. O. D. R. what is that?” Without waiting for an answer he went on “you see right now it is a very sensitive situation in China” and the rest became a blur of words as my head spun with the implications. Rejected? #@&%, oh S%^&, that’s bad, really bad.
How do you get around that? Sidelined, again (maybe even relegated to an observer watching via youtube!).
David Campbell (DC) and I had daily skype calls with Stef and John and within the first 2 weeks a couple of things became apparent: 1. If we were to operate a HODR program in China the volunteers would be predominately (if not exclusively) Chinese. 2. The only way we could operate would be with approval, on some level, from the government. The first item, personally, took a little time to adjust to. It was hard for me to think of an international deployment without someone from Ireland or the UK or New Zealand or Cameroon or Canada able to join. I could rationalize it out by thinking of our volunteer base in Biloxi consisting of mainly Americans, so it seemed appropriate that an event in China is filled with Chinese. I had numerous conversations with HODR alum and even current volunteers in Project Cedar Rapids and they all felt that it was not an issue. But, I still turned it over and over. The second item was more problematic, access was elusive. Even the ability to determine who could give us permission for access was a mystery. Stef and John had meeting after meeting (unusual style for HODR, but these were unusual circumstances!) and finally hit upon a scheme of partnering with a Chinese NGO that had permission to operate. We would operate under their umbrella thus avoiding the need for a separate approval to be bestowed upon HODR. Seemed easy enough.
In China the team worked at local access and in the USA we pondered my visa issues. We made a trip to a local Chinese restaurant to have them decipher the characters written on my original application. It was here over a yummy dim-sum buffet (acclimatizing?) that we realized I hadn’t been rejected – I just hadn’t been approved! The embassy made a very deft maneuver; they sent my application back with no visa and the explanation was that I needed to apply in my home consular district. This sounds plausible until you talk to the visa experts, who tell you they had never heard of this. The experts say they fulfill applications for all 50 states. We thought the visa bureau had singled me out because I listed my employer as HODR and international disaster response personnel were not needed or wanted in Sichuan. If they want to shuffle me off to someone else – then fine. I will re-apply to my “home consular district” in Chicago. I found a helpful expeditor in based in Chicago and sent my application off with a few changes. 1. I was no longer flying to Chengdu (the largest city near the epicenter) now my flight only took me to Beijing. 2. I no longer had a reservation to stay in Chengdu, now I was booked in at a hostel in Beijing. 3. I no longer was applying for a 1 year multiple entry visa, now it was a 30 day single entry. 4. My employer was listed as Hands On as opposed to HODR (a little more obscure when you do a Google search!). With fingers crossed DC and I continued to skype with Stef and John daily to hear of their efforts.
Palo, Ia
It was a hectic time as I made a quick trip to Project Cedar Rapids where I stumbled around in an unfamiliar environment (USA HODR deployment!) and attempted to be of assistance to Ops Dir. Bill Driscoll, Jr. It is difficult to be in the middle of so much destruction but also moving to be around so many people motivated to help, it is the same world over, disaster after disaster. It was during my 1st 24hours in Palo that I received confirmation of my Chinese visa. Hurray!!! Off the sidelines!
Beijing, China
Stef and John set up a flurry of meetings for my 2 day stay in Beijing and I was fortunate to have Stef join me. We learned in the Philippines that without on the ground experience the meetings are not as productive. Within 2 hours of my flight landing I was meeting with the Director of Social Science Institute at Beijing University, Madame Zhang. It was my introduction to the difficulties faced by Stef and John for the past 2 weeks. In the first 4 minutes it was evident that she was unwilling (or unable, but I think more the prior) to help us, she didn’t even make eye contact (ostrich syndrome?). After a rather futile 30 minutes we excused ourselves and left for a dinner meeting.
Happily, the next two days were filled with great meetings and opportunities for partnerships, so much so that Stef left Beijing 1 day early to join a team on one of their assessments in Sichuan. It was with high spirits that I flew from the country's capital into the hard-hit province of Sichuan (along with the world’s tallest man – who was coincidentally on my flight. At 7’9’’ when he stooped in the aircraft his shoulders touched the ceiling!).
Sichuan, China
The devastation was as complete as any I have seen anywhere. Most of the homes/buildings are made of cement block or brick and the earthquake had been strong enough and long enough to knock almost all of them down. Those that remained were so badly damaged that they were no longer suitable for habitation. It was much like Pisco except not adobe structures and much like Sawit but on a more massive scale. The hillsides suffering from quake driven landslides looked like a huge hand had dragged its fingernails down them to scrape the vegetation away exposing the bare sandy soil underneath The asphalt roads were not too bad, but the more common cement roads were a complete mess, broken, upheaved, and somewhat passable in a bone jarring way. I walked among the residents of Wudu village and was moved by their spirit, their resiliency, their willingness to laugh. They had started to pick themselves up, to act on their own behalf, not waiting for someone to do for them. They had been told they would not receive a placement in a relocation camp, they would instead get 2,000 RMB to build a transitional shelter. They acknowledged that the help we offered had value.
But, the optimism carry over from the Beijing meetings was short lived. The roller-coaster ride that HODR had been on for 5 weeks resumed (I was just added to the car) as the assessment that Stef returned from was another dead-end. The same issues continued to surface even with willing Chinese partners: 1. Local government unwillingness to yield access for our model. 2. Local government unable to see value in our starting point service.
The other observation was………the response of the government.
Again, I have never seen anything like it. It is now 58 days after the event and the government has built 1.64 million (MILLION) temporary housing units! We viewed one prefabricated relocation community that had to contain maybe 6,000 units! But they are not all huge cities on flat open spaces – they were also found in very rural hillside areas, tucked into a recently flattened space accommodating 150 units. The technique is common to China, they house their construction workers and coal miners like this. It is steel framed room with a prefabricated wall and roof of Styrofoam insulation sandwiched between corrugated metal. They have a door and windows and are wired for electricity. They build them in rectangular blocks where they share common sidewalls. The blocks are all laid out with cement walkways, drainage, and communal latrines with running water nearby. You could see the work at various levels of completion, ongoing everywhere. Impressive, mighty impressive.
I had 3 meetings at the village level. At each one of those meetings I was told that the central government had issued a new mandate to “collectivise the homes.” The individual farmers will be moved to central, high-rise, apartment style homes. This would be a better use of the land and would allow the gov’t to have tighter control over the construction techniques used in the rebuilding.
It is not because of the government’s ability to respond, nor its plan to centralize, but because of its proclivity to both welcome assistance and deny it that we have decided to not deploy. We have found an environment that is not conducive for the type of program that HODR can offer. I honestly believe that we can morph a HODR deployment into anything we want it to be. I feel open to the possibility that a HODR deployment may not look like anything we have ever created before, but the at the core there are two things that must exist:
- people in need must be served
- HODR provides a stable platform on which volunteers can perform service
Marc
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