Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

I’m sure everyone has heard of earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale that took place in Wenchuan, 92 kms northwest of Chengdu on Monday 12th May. Going by current estimates it has killed over 60,000 people, injured many more and made over 5 million people homeless.

We first heard about the earthquake as we were floating down the Li river near Yangshuo (in southern China and obviously at a safe distance). Interestingly enough though, we were in Chengdu no less than 24 hours earlier. If our flight had been delayed by one day, we would’ve pretty much been taking off during the earthquake.

A friend of mine remarked afterwards that if we had still been there, it at least would have been a life-altering experience. I would agree, but it does assume that at the time of the earthquake you weren’t stuck in some dodgy building put together by a less-than-scrupulous Chinese construction company. There are unfortunately quite a few Chinese (school children in particular, sadly) who were.

I guess sometimes you just get very, very lucky.