The death toll from yesterday’s quake in Sichuan province is still mounting. The folks over at Shanghaiist are keeping up with developments.

What can I say? I’m really glad we weren’t traveling in the area this week.

In separate language lessons, Alex and I both learned the word for earthquake – 地震 (dizhen). I also learned near and far. The earthquake was close to Chengdu. The earthquake was far from Beijing, but we still felt it.

After my meeting with Grace, my language partner, I went to grocery store, which was entirely mobbed. It didn’t seem like people were stocking up for a coming apocalypse though, just everyone decided that Monday night was a good time to pick up a few things.

In front of me in line were a pair of somewhat dusty young men, with darker, more wide and angular looking features than many of the ethnic Han Chinese I see around. Between them, they had one basket and bought two pairs of shoes, two pairs of briefs, some toothpaste, a couple handtowels. They blushed and tried to look macho and indifferent while the young female checker scanner the underwear. They each pulled out wallets and contributed 100 rmb bills (somewhat less than $20) to pay; their fingernails were surprisingly long, but dirty. They had a brief discussion about how to divy up the change, and the checker, easily a foot and half shorter than either of them, but secure in her position as a city-dweller, gave them an evil look for not taking their bags out of the way quickly enough. I presume that they were migrant workers from one of Beijing’s many construction sites. One report I saw said 40 square miles of the city is under construction.

Alex has also told me that of the 17 million people in Beijing, some 5 million are unregistered migrants. They come to build the new buildings, to work in the factories, to do any number of things. Women come to work in the ‘massage parlors,’ and return home after a few years. As long as they return with money, no one asks too many questions. A great many of the migrants come from Sichuan province, something Peter Hessler mentions in oracle Bones.

On his way home last night, Alex told me he saw a pair of construction workers on the side of the road, one curled into a ball and sobbing on the other. The tremors are being felt in Beijing in many different ways.