I just found a post on Global Voices with a bunch of different survival stories from the Sichuan earthquake. It made me cry, particularly the last one.

The front page statistics from the weekend edition of China Daily are 68,858 killed, 366,586 injured and 18,618 missing, with $5.75 billion in donations. The main headline, “34,000 evacuated for fear of flooding.”

What it most makes me want to do, actually, is go back and find who is still working on reconstruction in the places that got hit by the 2005 tsunami, which is no longer in the news, but surely still needs support. It takes a long time to rebuild when everything is destroyed. Or Katrina, though that still makes the US news from time to time, with what’s happening, or not happening as the case may be, in progress of rebuilding, rehabilitating, reestablishing, re…

On a more personal note, I am shedding skin like a reptile, on account of horrific sunburn acquired while cycling around a large lake. The sunscreen I brought with me turned out to be old (I had a small pot of it, for carrying on airplanes without checking luggage) and not overly effective, leading to some blistered burns on my right arm and ankle. Should Alex’s pictures from the last couple days of the trip ever come to light, you will see that my hands are wrapped in bandanas because I am afraid of further damage. Nobody asked, but I had a good explanatory phrase pieced together from my rudimentary Mandarin and ready to go. Wo tai bai le. I’m too white.

Photos from Dali, where I acquired the sunburn, are now up, as are photos from Lijiang, where we saw yakss, in addition to those from Kunming.