Yesterday's 7.9 earthquake in China struck near Chengdu, where the International Science Fiction Conference was held last year and where the offices of Science Fiction World, China's premier SF magazine and book publisher, are located. The translator I was assigned at that conference, Xu Haiyan, has become a friend. She lives in Singapore, and yesterday I emailed her to see if she knew what had happened to the staff at SF World. Haiyan said she'd received a text message from a friend that everyone at the magazine was safe. No phone calls were possible, since the lines and towers are all down.
As of this morning, news media were reporting no word from the Sichuan giant-panda breeding facility, where I so happily held a panda, got lost in the rain with Neil Gaiman, and admired the gorgeous grounds. Keep your fingers crossed.
LATER UPDATE: The pandas at the Chengdu facility are safe, but still no word on those at the Wolong Nature Center.
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10 comments:
I just got a confirm from an editor of SFW who has been continuously posting news about her real life expereince in Chengdu during the earthquake in a SF online group
(http://www.douban.com/group/sfw/) that all the editors of Science Fiction World magazine are safe.
I called my home at Wuhan right after I saw the news of earthquake early morning yesterday. They said that they saw the shaking of the computer screen but they didn't know it was an earthquake. Many cities in China felt the quake.
Now Chinese Prime Minister is leading some rescue teams to the damaged places and in fact he himself is doing rescue work under the danger of the following-up earthquakes.
86 pandas at Wolong Natural Center are all safe.
Thank you, Ruhan! That's more up-to-date information than mine, and very reassuring. I'm glad your family is all right, too.
Hello, Nancy. I just learned about your blog through Neil Gaiman's (which I read fairly frequently), and I thought I'd drop by to say hello, that I've read a few of your short stories, as well as a book or two, and that I thought I'd mention that I'd like to link to your blog, as well.
Gary
Oops. Forgot to mention that I also read a lot of the fiction columns you wrote for Writer's Digest, as well.
Welcome aboard, Gary!
Somewhere between Chengdu and now, I lost all of the business cards of the translators and people I'd met there last year. I'm glad the word is mostly positive about Chengdu, but the pictures from the epicenter are heartbreaking.
This is heartbreaking. Almost =7000= school buildings collapsed in the earthquake zone. Countless little ones buried alive. A father, his hands bloody from clawing though the rubble, searching for his daughter, spoke (his wife was numb), "The house is gone. The child is dead."
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I never considered how the pandas were affected. I think it's very important to conserve and protect endangered species everywhere. Thanks for the blog.
Emergency Survival Guy
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