19th April, 2010 - nameless heroes

(Photo from Gulfnews)

The swift response to the Qinhai Yushu earthquake made by the central government should be praised, but there were many people had done their part in the rescure efforts. The media had predominately played up the smart leadership of government and marvellous work of rescure crews, but they seldom mentioned a group of people who played a crucial role in the rescure efforts - a thousands of Buddhist monks.

The monks, some of them lived in Yushu and other came from outside, provided a indispensable help to save lives. Dressed in maroon and yellow robes, we can see them everywhere in television images and newspaper pictures. They worked along with rescurers, pulled surviors and bodies out from rubble, helped distributing necessaries and even offer counselling to the victims. In light of the authorities yesterday, the death toll had raised to 1,706 and 256 were listed missing. But according to the living Buddha of the Jiegu monastery, the death toll could reach 10,000 eventually. Indeed, many people may not have registered the death of their loved one with government, but carried their bodies directly to the monasteries. As the rescurers from outside had suffered from high altitude sickness and faced language barrier, those monks have none of these problems and did even better and efficiently to reinforce the rescure efforts.

Over 90 percent of Yushu is populated by Tibetans, and most of them are deeply religious. The Buddhist monks offer spiritual guidance and comfort the victims who needed to cope with the death of their loved one. In the foreseeable future, those monks will linger to provide help in terms of bolstering the rebuilt of the city and counselling people in the aftermath of the rescure efforts.