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United International College (BNU-HKBU)   

Daily Log of Sichuan Visit (May 17-22, 2008)

Johnston Huang, Secretary, Task Force for 512 Love and Caring Actions

May 17, Saturday

I arrived at ChengDu about 4:00 a.m. in the morning on May 17, 2008. The flight, scheduled originally to depart Guangzhou at 9:40 p.m., was delayed for 3 hours. It seemed that air traffic at ChengDu Airport has not yet returned to normal.

After a brief rest at the hotel, I went to the Sichuan Provincial Education Department at 8:30 a.m. Pushed around by different units for almost an hour, I was eventually received by Mr Wang Fengxiong, Deputy Director General, Education Department of Sichuan Province. He proposed us to consider 1) setting up a Tent School in Mianyang Jiuzhou Sports Stadium, 2) providing social work services to two groups (around 170) of junior high school students relocated in Chengdu from YinShiu, since their parents were not yet found and 3) raising fund to rebuild the QinChuan Junior High School (costing 5 to 6 Millions CYN) or rebuild some village primary schools, costing approximately 450k each, if we failed to raise enough money for the former. I thanked for his kind support and promised to explore these recommendations.

After visiting the Provincial Education Bureau I went to the Western China Counselling Centre of the Sichuan University hoping to discuss with the faculty members of its Psychiatry Dept which is delegated by the ChengDu government to coordinate psychological crisis interventions in the area. Here I met with Prof Suen SL, Head of Department, and their team of psychiatrists. They have recruited 200 volunteers who received certain counselling training before. Prof Suen welcomed our assistance immediately as he found his volunteers incapable to handling the debriefing tasks. He is knowledgeable about social work profession and stated clearly all he wants is some experienced social workers to lead their volunteers and work together with their psychiatrists. They divided themselves into 3 teams, one focused on School Counselling services, one attached to hospitals and the last team to be sent to work in the Refugee camps. I was invited to provide consultations and share my experiences with all 3 teams on the next day. I delightedly accept the invitation and consider this the best though indirect way to serve the people who survived the earthquake.

In the afternoon, I headed off to MianYang. Half way, we stopped at the ChengDu Medical School where 104 junior high students from WenChuan was relocated. The Medical School has formed an independent school named under "Brotherhood Love" (translation). A teacher of the Medical School was held responsible for the project. He involved many of his students to act as peer mentors for the High School students. Since the Medical School already has plans to help these students it was deemed not necessary to provide our services here.

When I came to the Jiuzhou Sports Stadium, it was nearly 5:00 p.m. MingYang was 3 hours drive away from ChengDu in case of swift traffic. I spent more than expected time to reach the site because the city government has banned vehicle access to the Stadium. Too many people have driven from all over to donate materials to refugees and created serious traffic jams. Now donors have to walk 15 to 20 minutes carrying bags of noodles, biscuits, drinking water, clothes, pocket money etc. and distributed them to the refugees. More than 12k of refugees, mainly from the district of BeiChuan, were housed here. The number of refugees is still on the rise as more people are expected to be evacuated from BeiChuan. The scenario at Jiuzhou reflected the immense pressure to mange the large influx of refugees on the City Government of MingYang.

As late as 7:45 p.m., I came to meet Principal Wu of the South Hill College, a partner school of UIC. Fortunately damage was minimal here. Only a few old buildings were found structurally not suitable for use. The School recorded no casualty in the incident. On the other hand the school has received 400 students, rescued by the government from BeiChuan and QinChuan, whose family members were not found. When I discussed with Principal Wu about the possibilities of setting up a training and service base of UIC at the South Hill College he showed worries for the limited availability of space, since they have to resume schools soon while some school buildings still need reconstruction. In this case I saw no point of formally put the request forward; instead we should look for alternatives. 

May 18, Sunday

In response to the invitation of Prof SL Suen, Head of Western China Psychiatry Department, I joined a meeting of their staff and volunteers at 9:00 a.m. Waiting for me first was the team for school counselling, headed by Prof Wang Yi. She specialize in children and adolescent psychiatric care including suicide prevention. The process of school debriefing was thoroughly discussed. Since most of the psychiatric doctors and students do not have disaster debriefing experience, I shared with them the standard procedures we use in HK by social work profession and clinical psychologists, particularly the systematic procedures adopted by HK Education and Manpower Bureau. The meeting lasted for more than one and half hours.

A second team immediately came in before the first meeting ended. This team was responsible for debriefing work at DouJiangYin. Teachers and students of 4 schools from the area of WenChuan were waiting earnestly for them. These schools were all hit heavily by the earthquake and many lives were lost. I pointed out to them the CISD (Critical Incident Stress Debriefing) process and CSI (Critical Stress Inventory) they used to, were catered for adults and might not be suitable for adolescents. The need for organizing school wide grief relief activities was also emphasized.

The third team, working for refugees' camps has taken us to the Refugee Center at Wang Lungxi (Yellow Dragon Stream), Chengdu. They have difficulties in assessing the psycholigical needs of the refugees since tools they generally used like GHQ (General Health Questionaire) were not applicable to these service targets as most of these self reporting tools require certain level of literacy from the respondents. On the other hand we could not afford the time to interview all refugees individually. I suggested them to use home visit as an alternative needs assessment tool. We led their volunteers to conduct home visits and demonstrated to them the techniques involved, from ice-breaking to recording. A whole afternoon was devoted then to acquaint their volunteers to the home visit process.

A reporting crew from ATV followed us the whole day to capture the stories.

May 19, Monday

Early in the morning we depart Chengdu for Wanjiang. Here a school, with both primary and junior high sections, has 3 students died in the earthquake. The teachers experienced a lot of emotional distress and were resistant to resumption of school. The session starts with a talk on "Common psychological responses during crisis", delivered by Prof Wang Yi. Sixty teachers were then divided into 5 groups for debriefing. The process of debriefing was discussed and modified even on our way to the site. Nearly half of the teachers expressed strong feelings during the debriefing and burst into tears. After the debriefing most teachers found it very useful and helpful in preparing them for resuming school.

In the afternoon, we conduct a similar session for 56 teachers who have received some training in general counselling. Thirty minutes for conclusion were added at the end as we hoped these teachers could go back to their schools and start a series of students' debriefing. These teachers responded to the earthquake similar to those who did not have any counselling training at all. At the end, they treasured the training opportunity and requested for more support in the future.

On this day, another reporting crew from Oriental TV followed us instead.

May 20, Tuesday

We departed ChengDu for MingYang again in the morning. The procedure for setting up a center at Jiuzhou Sports Stadium was explored. I then went to the Third MingYang Hospital and met with their Head of Psychiatry Department, Dr Wen Hung. She welcomed our assistance and suggested immediately that we could follow up on some of the schools that they have paid initial visits. She arranged me further to meet with the Deputy Chief of the Hospital, Prof Huang Suenyin, who voluntarily agreed to allow UIC to set up a base of our psychological services at their Hospital. Later on I also met with 2 of their psychiatric doctors who have led volunteers to visit 2 BeiChuan's village schools, now relocated in MingYang's public schools. Plans were made to visit these 2 schools in the following day.

In the afternoon I tried to reach Ms Chik Liwah, Deputy Party Secretary of Education Department of MingYang. Unfortunately she has gone to inspect village schools in the BeiChuan area. Nevertheless she provided useful information to me and highlighted that they need huge quantities of tents to resume school; tents that could accommodate 30 pupils comfortably and served as mobile classrooms. These tents were totally out of stock in MingYang and ChengDu.

I met the Deputy Security Chief of MingYang City Mr Bai, a parent of my mentee, in late evening at the Jiuzhou Sports Stadium. He has kindly provided us support and assistance and connected us firmly with the Communist Youth League of the City, which is responsible for coordinating all young volunteers in the Jiuzhou Stadium.

May 21, Wednesday

This is the last full day I could work for the earthquake survivors before heading back to Zhuhai. My objective is to visit the 2 schools from BeiChuan. However the traffic was very bad this day and we managed to arrive at MingYang at 10:30 a.m., one hour later than schedule. As pupils would have lunch at 11:00 a.m., we have to start debriefing and counselling only in the afternoon.

I went instead to the Third MingYang Hospital and met with Mr Tseng Yiu, Chairman of psychological services team for earthquake refugees, MingYang Psychological Association. Mr Tseng pointed out that they prefer collaboration in long term and hoped that we could follow the clients school by school and revisited the same groups of clients in the future. Counseling to them should be a continuous process. I fully agreed with him and informed him of the plans of UIC. He asked whether we could deliver a talk to 170 refugee students from the Chen Family Damp Junior High School in Beichuan, at 4:00 p.m. on the same day. How could we say no to 170 souls in desperate need?  

I tried to fit in the visit to the former school, the Liu Han Primary School, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., before joining Mr Tseng, however again in vain. The principal of the Liu Han, Mr Yang, was busy receiving teams of reporters who fancied the story that their teachers have saved all 74 young children of this school and walked 2 days to safer areas for rescue. The only alternative was to go to the Chen Family Damp Junior High again and came back at 6:30 p.m. when the teachers and students were supposed to have finish supper.

The Chen Family Damp was now settled in the campus of the South Western University of Financial Studies, 5 minutes before 4:00 p.m. just to learn that the authorities were moving the students to another school. After waiting for more than half an hour Mr Tseng told us that we could now start the programme. However instead of helping 40 students in a tent classroom as we were told previously, we were requested to conduct the training in open space for nearly 170 students. We immediately responded to the challenge and modified our debriefing activities to fit the large size of groups. The majority of these junior high school students seemed to have recovered from the tragedy, as they exhibited no more physical symptoms of stress. However it worth serious attention as probably one fifth of the students who have close friends died in the event was reluctant to talk about the incident entirely. One girl whose brother has died broke into tears accompanied immediately by other students who were close to her brother. Obviously they were told to be strong or at least to show that they were alright. Burying their feelings was not conducive to their positive mental health.

We returned to the Liu Han School around 6:45 p.m. Our focus was 6 students who have lost one of their parents and 5 female teachers who have lost their family members. Principal Yang suggested that we should walk into the dormitory of the 5 teachers informally because he thought that they would not receive official counseling. We did as he said and fortunately all the five teachers were sitting and chatting together. It might not be a coincidence since they must have found it easier to share about the painful among them than talking to other colleagues whose family members survived the earthquake. We found that there were mixed feelings of guilt, hatred and discontent among these teachers as the media all focused on the needs of school children while forgetting the needs of teachers. Blowing up the story of their escape from the disaster area as heroic actions just added salt to their wounds. They were willing to share their deepest feelings to us. Probably they have also gone through their worst stage as most of them were not able to eat and sleep in the first few days. They were accepting the reality however their conditions need close monitoring. The cases were referred back to the Third Hospital to see whether medication would help.     

May 22, Thursday

Since after lunch I have to depart ChengDu for Guangzhou by plane, I chose to visit the Psychiatry Department of the Western China Hospital, the Sichuan Provincial Education Department and the Sichuan Provincial Civil Affairs Department to discuss our future plans. The Western China people were very thankful to our support and hope that we could assist them in developing intervention manuals. Joint researches and publications were also possible. People of the Provincial Education Department reconfirmed the tremendous needs for support particularly for the district of QinChuan. They recommended that we should concentrate our resources to help the most needed area. The Provincial Civil Affairs Department was still in confusion and chaos, as they were responsible for the overall relief work of all refugees. 

Reluctantly I left Chengdu for Zhuhai around 2p.m., tetlling myself that I shall come back soon.

Johnston Huang

May 2008.