housing units

Approaching the mountains from the Chengdu plain along the main road to Beichuan County, red banners with large white characters expressing support for the earthquake victims and thanks to the rescuers, are strung across the road, as if creating an arbor for all to pass through.  Driving up this road doesn’t feel safe, even now, six weeks after the quake.  The steep slopes of the mountains on both sides of our vehicle loom above us.  Huge boulders are scattered everywhere on the mountain sides, landslides are all around, and I cannot stop thinking about the description given by a group of tourists of the moment the quake struck: “the mountains exploded as if hit by a megaton bomb”. 

At the 700 year-old Er'wang Temple in the Dujiangyan World Heritage Site.

Six weeks and one day since the massive 8.0 earthquake hit Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province and I am participating in the first World Bank mission to the earthquake-affected area.  In the last six weeks the relief effort conducted by the Chinese government and citizens has been widely applauded.  Now the attention is turning to the future – damage assessments are under way and reconstruction planning has commenced.  The purpose of our mission this week is to better understand the impact of the earthquake and to see how the Bank could best provide assistance during the reconstruction period.
   
Today’s site visit took us to Dujiangyan, a city that I first visited almost exactly 12 years ago.  The city sits beside one of China’s greatest engineering achievements – the Dujiangyan Irrigation System – a massive water diversion project built in the 3rd Century BC on a scale that only the Chinese, ancient and modern, could conceive.