The Sichuan earthquake last week, and the subsequent massive news coverage of the disaster has galvanized the whole Chinese nation into giving funds, clothing, and their services to those affected by the devastation of the earthquake. The article below describes how one high class car club threw their funds, and automobiles together to rally around for the Sichuanese:
MIANYANG, CHINA — With their expensive Mercedes-Benz sports vehicles, the wealthy members of the Chongqing car club are normally accustomed to tooling around town in their luxury cars and taking weekend leisure trips.
But this week they piled into their SUVs, filled up their vehicles with boxes of medicine and food, and drove 500 kilometres to the scene of the Sichuan earthquake. Nearly 100 club members raced to the disaster zone, in convoys of 20 cars or more, to bring relief supplies to homeless survivors.
“We didn’t even think about it,” one of the club members said. “We definitely have a duty to help our brothers and sisters.”
In a country with no tradition of private philanthropy or community activism, the Sichuan earthquake has given birth to a remarkable development: a grassroots volunteer movement on a massive scale. Some analysts say it could be a historic moment, the first signs of the emergence of broad-based civil society in a country where emperors and autocrats have ruled for centuries.
The volunteers have come from all over China. In the city of Leshan, more than 400 kilometres from the earthquake, a former soldier named Shao Zhi saw the disaster coverage on television.
“I can’t just sit here,” he told his family. “People are still alive, and I want to help them.”
He and a dozen friends spent more than $4,000 to buy water, medicine, bread and dried noodles. Then they packed it all in a rented truck and four private cars and drove all night to the disaster zone, arriving at 4 a.m. in the devastated city of Beichuan to deliver their aid.
The former soldier and the Mercedes owners are among a huge army of Chinese volunteers, numbering in the tens of thousands, who have poured into the earthquake zone in an extraordinary outpouring of private aid. Most of the volunteers are independent, self-financed and self-co-ordinated, in sharp contrast to China’s traditional system of government decrees and cradle-to-grave state welfare.
In the quake-damaged city of Mianyang alone, more than 9,000 volunteers, including hundreds from far-off provinces, have formed the Red Ribbon movement to help the quake victims. Thousands of volunteers are donating clothes or providing medical help at a sports stadium where 20,000 homeless survivors have been given shelter. The roads are so clogged with private aid convoys that the police have ordered many off the road to make room for ambulances and emergency vehicles.
In Chengdu, a Buddhist temple has become a collection centre and staging ground for the volunteers. More than 1,000 people have donated food, medicine and other supplies to the centre. Medical teams from as far away as Beijing and Guangzhou have arrived at the temple, where they were placed in vehicles heading to the disaster zone.
Nationally, the Chinese have donated more than $192-million to help the estimated 10 million people affected by the quake. Some have even rented bulldozers, cranes and excavators, transporting them to the disaster zone to search for survivors in the collapsed buildings.
Thousands of people have queued for hours to donate blood. In the cities of Chengdu and Shanghai, dozens of local blood banks were filled to maximum capacity within two days and were forced to turn away hundreds of potential donors.
You can read the rest of the article on Globe and Mail
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