THE CITY OF RUINES 廢墟都市 2009

I visited the seriously damaged districts including Wenchuan County, Yingxiu Town, and Dujiangyan City next to Chengdu in 2009, the year after the Great Wenchuan Earthquake. It has been a year since the disaster, yet there are still crumbling walls and dilapidated houses! The after-shock scene of the disaster is still kept. You can still see the remains and collapsed houses, debris were not removed and broken houses were left unrepaired… Every house yet to collapse are standing at the end of the street blankly like giant gravestones.

It gives you strong feeling being in the disaster area, after all this is the first time for me witnessing a scene like this! I have been staying in the area for a few days, taking tons of photos like mad everyday in a hope to make records of the situation. It was my fortune that I could still take these pictures one year after the event.

These was once a couple of middle ages came to me while I was taking photos inside the city of Dujiangyan, “ Are you a journalist from Hong Kong? Please take more pictures, and tell the others that our government did nothing a year after the disaster, we have been living in this city like in ruins for a year and nothing was changed, we don’t even know when the reconstruction will start!”

I went back to Chengdu again in 2010, but I saw nothing but the celebration of the good times, people there seems to have forgotten everything about the earthquake. This is a bit unusual in the view of a stranger.

汶川大地震後翌年的2009年，我到訪了重災區的汶川市、映秀鎮及隣近成都的都江堰市。災難過去了一年，所到之處仍然是頹門敗瓦，滿目瘡痍！仍保存著受災後不久的模樣。很多地方仍然是廢墟、倒塌的樓宇，瓦礫沒人清理，破屋沒人修補… 每座尚未倒塌的樓房，就在市內街頭巷尾空洞地矗立著，像是一座座的巨型墓碑！

在災區感受很深，畢竟我是生平第一次親眼看見這樣的情景！我在災區逗留了好幾天，每天瘋狂拍照，希望為此景象做紀錄。我感到幸運，災後一年仍可拍到這些照片。

在都江堰市內街上拍攝途中，一對中年夫婦走到我身旁對我說：「你是香港來的記者吧？請多拍些照片回去發表，告訴其他人我們的政府災後一年什麼也沒有做，我們在這廢墟似的城市生活了一年什麼也沒有改變，重建何時開始也不知道！」

2010年我又去了成都，但感覺不到什麼，只看見一片歌舞昇平，那裡的人好像把地震一事忘得一乾二淨。對於一個外地人來說，總覺有點異樣！