Several Thousand Good Neighbors
China, 2008
To step inside the walls of the Qinjianrenjia displacement camp boggles the mind. To spend time among camp's residents warms the heart.
Built by the Chinese government for survivors of May's Sichuan earthquake, Qinjianrenjia lies on the outskirts of the disaster-affected city of Dujiangyan. The camp houses more than 13,000 people from the city and its surrounding villages — and it is only one of ten such camps around the city. At the time of the earthquake, this place was fallow farmland. A little more than two weeks afterward, it was a small city of temporary homes, paved byways and community infrastructure.
In Mandarin Chinese, Qinjianrenjia means "prosperous and diligent." It could just as easily mean "neighborly."
Each home in the camp is a mere 20 square meters and accommodates four people. There are six such apartments per building, making for close living quarters. There are literally hundreds of these dwellings. When I looked down the rows of buildings, I couldn't see the end of the camp.
Displaced families will live in this place for the next three to five years, until their villages and apartment buildings are rebuilt. Between this fact and the recent trauma of the earthquake, you might assume an impatient and even volatile situation. But instead, residents are making the best of life here.
Families are busy at work beautifying their tiny living quarters: we saw several couples making flowerbeds outside their home. Others shared in the task of tidying up the sidewalks. Residents treated each other as old friends; in some cases, they had been neighbors before moving here nearly two months ago.
Lu Daifang, who comes from nearby Dujiangyan city, lost everything in her household when the earthquake collapsed her building — at least 40 of her neighbors didn't make it out alive. Today, she lives along the same block as many of her surviving neighbors.
"We get together more often now," she joked, as a dozen or so friends gathered near. In addition to the living quarters, the Chinese government provided her surviving family — herself, her husband, their son and 10-year-old grandson — with beds and bedding.
Not far away, eight-year-old Li Xinrui sits outside solving math problems. She's doing "holiday homework," which is especially important this year since classes halted in the earthquake's aftermath. Her family's apartment building in Dujiangyan also collapsed, as did her school. Even when we're talking with her, she barely looks up from her workbook.
Mercy Corps, working alongside the local Women's Federation, is helping children like Li Xinrui to move past the trauma of the earthquake and cope with life in this new reality. Two youth-specific programs — Comfort for Kids and Moving Forward — provide age appropriate, culturally sensitive activities that feel more like fun and games than an opportunity for healing.
The children here in Qinjianrenjia followed us around and tried to greet us in English. One eight-year old boy even gave us some of his candy. When I tried to take just one piece, he dropped several into my hand. Nearby his mother, 33-year-old Deng Chunyan, is preparing a Sichuan specialty called twice-cooked pork. "It's a dish that makes everyone happy," she says. The delectable aroma permeates the whole neighborhood. She invites us to stay for dinner, but we have to go to another meeting.
This camp sprung from this land out of necessity. But it's the kindness, generosity and collaboration of its residents that has made it a community.
(Cover photo by Norman Ng. This story originally appeared on the Mercy Corps website: https://www.mercycorps.org/articles/china/several-thousand-good-neighbors.)
