John is responsible for much of my email. He only knows this now. But I read it all, after-all, I was the one who said to him, “spam me with g-town stuff I might wanna blog”, while wistfully nostalgia-ising over my favourite city. I don’t really read the Australian news anymore, or only in the same juvenile context I read trash-mags, so I suppose the storms and floods and other sundry disasters sweeping Lingnan have gone mostly unregarded, though I was sitting in BBQ-heaven a couple of weeks ago (that goes by the completely untranslated name of 大家好…somethingsomething) and watching Hong Kong news while doing a poor commentary on the floods in Sichuan to everyone else at the table, so I guess the news reached some Australians.
Once in the monsoon season in Guangzhou I schlepped into computer city somewhere along Tianhe Road, it was a sultry afternoon, heavy with lighting, more liquid than air. Maybe twenty minutes later I emerged into absolute blackness, not just the blackness of night that exists at a distance, but an enshrouding vacuum rendering dead even buildings mere blocks away. The deluge itself obliterated what remained, and having nowhere to go submerged the wide street thigh deep in a murky yellow-brown swamp, added to by exploding manhole covers and fat geysers of raw sewerage from swollen drains, a street became a torrent. 洪水猛兽, a deluge is a wanton beast.
China: Where’s the disaster relief blogging?
Apparently internet video is huge and growing in China these days. Yes, people want to see video. Interested in citizen reporting that’s relevant but perhaps apolitical? How about the weather?
Back to 56.com, now the top Chinese video sharing website. Like Flickr, the space it provides for reader involvement is often used—abused?—for larger discussions. Looking at 56.com’s current events channel, the fifth post from the top contains video, photos and personal accounts uploaded by users. Is it blogger coverage of the massive destruction seen all over southern China—where, from Guangzhou, 56.com is based—earlier this month? No, these videos, photos and accounts, although posted this past week, all date back to last summer when Saomai, the strongest typhoon to pass through China since the Communist Party seized control [zh], ripped through the country’s coastal east and south.
So where to find live disaster blogging from this past month’s catastrophe? This blogger has looked but still doesn’t know. Is Chinese media coverage sufficient? Project Diaster’s video blog seems to only bring us training videos and clips from old TV shows. So what’s the problem?
