As you may have heard in the news, They last three days were national days of mourning for the Chinese people. On Monday there were three minutes of silence in remembrance of all those who died or were hurt in the earthquake on May 12th. On Monday afternoon I went to finish some official procedures for my Foreigner residence permit. I had to go to the Bureau for Public Pacification, get my picture taken and hand in a few forms. On the way there, the radio was announcing the three minutes of silence. While I was getting my form reviewed by the bureaucrat I got a cell phone message saying at precisely 2:28 there would commence three minutes of silence, and also that all boats, trains, trucks and cars would stop and blow their horns. Sure enough, a minute later the bureaucrats all stood up and everyone in line stopped pushing and stood still and quiet for three minutes. I would have liked to have been on the street in order to see the scene, but it was still moving were I was. I was in a large hall that fell totally silent besides a child talking and muted horns and sirens could be heard from outside. I felt as though it was completely appropriate memorial and it was inspiring as well as moving to think that all across such a vast country everyone was doing the same thing.

In addition to the three minutes of silence at 2:28 in the afternoon on Monday, exactly a week after the earthquake, the government also announced three days of mourning. Many newspapers printed one character in black and white on the entire front page of the newspaper, such as the character for mourning. All home pages for websites were changed to black and white. All websites for video and media (the local youtube equivalents) had search functions disabled and the only videos accessible were videos of the disaster.

I think one of the smartest things that the Chinese government has done is to bring so much media attention to the event. Because of this, there is much international support and donations, and the domestic reaction has been huge. When people see the suffering but also see that volunteers and rescue operations are effective, they are also moved to act themselves and donate money, blood, supplies and time. There is also public pressure from citizens on companies to react and donate funds at the risk of losing customers. Besides the timely and proportionate response by the government sending in the army, the media attention has played a great part in letting people know how serious it was. I know I personally didn't really respond the day it happened. I didn't pay much attention to the news until the second day when I finally realized how serious it was

The Times of London ran a great article today about how the media attention that the Chinese have been giving this disaster has brought on a much different reaction than the media coverage the disaster in Myanmar/Burma is getting.