祖国的花朵们是我们的希望
震后 请大家来关注孩子们
记者:Thane Burnett，Toronto Sun
编译：安婆婆编辑部
绵阳，中国——在大地震带走了那么多孩子以后，每个新生命的诞生都成了举国关注的事。
我们现在绵阳人民医院的妇产科， 19号病床上躺着的是王定春(Din Chun Wang)和她的新生宝宝，父亲崔梁(Liang Chei)是当地的一个商人，正在忙着给孩子换尿片。
门口不时有其他病人驻足望向这个房间，新妈妈害羞地躲在军绿色的床单后，病房里不时传来一阵阵雀跃的细语。
这位21岁的母亲和当时未出生的宝宝经历了5月12发生的四川大地震。但她的父母安慰她说，她很健康，一定可以顺利分娩。
但地震是无情的，这场大地震夺走了成千上万儿童和成人的生命。
医院外，由于7万人在地震中死亡，为了防止可能会来的瘟疫，政府出动了洒水车和专门的人员来喷洒控制传染病的药水。但是在19号病床，气氛和外面是不同的，新生儿降临的喜悦感染了整座医院的人。
一位年轻的医生Chan Jia Li对着产科病房的人说， “我们在这里看到了希望，这里的人们都很坚强。”
在这次大灾难中，孩子们成了人们关注的焦点，尤其在中国这个实行计划生育政策的国家，失去他们的心痛和新生儿诞生的喜悦也牵动了全国人民的心。
都江堰中学一位在危难来临时，抛弃了学生，独自逃跑的教师被学校开除，并且成了全国人民唾弃的对象。
现在愿意收养地震孤儿的人数已经超过了孤儿的人数。
这次大灾难影响了大约300万的儿童，联合国儿童基金会预计有将近7000所的学校在地震中被毁坏。
人们开始对质疑这些建筑是不是豆腐渣工程。虽然官方早就做好面对这些疑问和群众指责的准备，但是却无瑕去追究这些已经过去的事实。
成都一名退休教师曾红林(Zeng Hongling)因为在因特网上公开指责政府，而被警方拘捕。外国记者，包括我在内，无法进入实地考察那些倒塌的学校。据说唯一曾进入过的记者最后也被警方审讯了。
昨天，记者在可以望见倒塌学校的区域拍摄照片，一名紧张却又有涵养的商人建议记者进入他的车内来拍摄。
事实上，拯救孩子是救援人员的第一任务，很多被埋在废墟中的成人都被告知要先将孩子们都救出来才能救他们。孩子们被救援出来后的后续工作也是政府人员的重中之重，人们在帐篷城中为孩子们建立了全新的学校，并为他们配备了心理辅导专家。
疫苗
大震后，有超过50万的12岁以下的灾区儿童注射了A类乙肝疫苗和B类脑炎疫苗。
在这次灾难中，可以说孩子们的微笑和痛苦都象征着灾区人民的心情。
在龙门山的帐篷区，我看到到11岁的Xie Yao在地上玩游戏，没有孩子注意到余震把周围地面上的鹅卵石都震得不停在跳动。
我曾经见到一个孩子，在地震后一个月都不能从震惊中恢复过来，而现在突然会开口叫妈妈了。
在帐篷课堂里，当孩子们被问到谁在地震中失去父亲或母亲的时候，他们会举起他们的小手，其中包括14岁的Su Yi，他是在学校倒塌后仅有的几个生还的孩子之一，而他的母亲却被地震多走了生命。
昨天SuYi回到开始在帐篷学校上学，帐篷学校就建在绵阳体育馆的外面，原来是用来收容地震中的生还者的。
就在SuYi课堂的前面，可以看到防生化灾害小组的帐篷。
SuYi说母亲平时对自己要求很高，总是教育他要“好好学习”。虽然母亲走了，但是他觉得母亲的话言犹在耳，无时不再督促着他。
视线回到绵阳人民医院，新生儿的妈妈小王希望她的儿子成为灾难和希望并存的象征，她和丈夫在孩子出生后一天就决定了宝宝的名字，这个名字将会用来纪念曾经发生过的一切，当他们像大家宣布这个名字的时候，医院上下都为之动容。
这个孩子就叫做震阳，他是在地震中出生的带给人们希望的太阳。
Hope in every tiny face
In quake’s wake, focus is on young
Thu, June 19, 2008
By THANE BURNETT
MIANYANG, China — After losing so many children, the addition of every new one becomes an affair of state.
We are in the maternity ward of Mianyang People’s Gynecology Hospital. In bed 19, Din Chun Wang rests beside her infant as father Liang Chei — a local businessman — moves in happily to change a wet diaper.
At the door, other patients peer into the room. The new mom shyly covers herself in the industrial green bedsheets. Happy whispers can be heard in the hall.
The 21-year-old mother feared for her life, and that of her unborn child, when their Sichuan city felt the Earth move on May 12.
But her parents comforted her, saying she was healthy enough not to let fear disrupt her pregnancy.
The quake wasn’t particular in who it killed. Thousands of children were lost as quickly as thousands of adults.
Outside the hospital, the death of almost 70,000 people is so fresh the government sprays cars and people with chemicals in the hopes of controlling infectious diseases which some fear could follow. But a different atmosphere has settled around bed 19 and is filtering throughout the hospital.
“We still see hope here,” a young doctor, Chan Jia Li, says of the maternity ward. “The people are strong.”
A great truth in most disasters is that children become the faces of loss and rebirth. Here in China — with its one-child policy for most families — this is especially true.
A Dujiangyan high school teacher is now public enemy No. 1, and has been fired, after he ran out of his school before any of his students during the earthquake.
There are now more people willing to adopt quake or -phans than there are orphans.
The disaster affected about 3 million children. The UN Children’s Fund estimates nearly 7,000 schools were completely destroyed.
Questions about the possible shoddy construction of many of those buildings has become a growing controversy. While officials seemed to be ready to face questions and public criticism early on, they are no longer in the mood to debate past choices.
A retired school teacher, Zeng Hongling, who used the Internet to criticize the government, has apparently been detained by police in Chengdu. Foreign reporters — including myself — cannot get close to the worst of the school collapses. At least one journalist who did get close was reportedly questioned at length by police.
Yesterday a nervous and well-connected businessman asked that we stay in his car rather than be caught taking photos in an area which overlooked a flattened school.
Yet it was the children who rescuers worked to keep alive first. Indeed, some trapped adults were told they would have to wait until every child was pulled out.
And it’s the surviving children who have been given priority treatment by officials, who’ve brought in counsellors and created an entirely new school system in tent cities.
VACCINATIONS
After the quake, more than half a million children under the age of 12 and in the worst affected communities were vaccinated against hepatitis A and encephalitis B.
In many ways, the children are the face of all that’s good and bad during this crisis.
In recent days, I’ve watched as 11-year-old Xie Yao played patty-cake on the grounds of a tent camp in an area known as the Dragon Gate’s Mountain. None of the children seemed to even notice several tremors shifting the pebbles around them.
I’ve seen a child who, for a month, went mute from shock — and then suddenly called to her mom.
And I’ve watched children in tent classrooms raise their hands when asked how many lost a parent in the quake. They included 14-year-old Su Yi, who barely survived the collapse of his school. His mother died where she stood.
Yesterday, Su Yi was back in class, this time at the tent school built outside the Mianyang sports stadium which originally housed survivors.
From the front of his class, you can just make out the biohazard team’s tent.
His mother, the teenager says, was strict when it came to his lessons.
“Study hard,” she would demand.
He says even though she’s gone, he can still hear her voice urging him on in life.
Across the city, new mother Wang decides her new son will become a face — and name — of both the tragedy and the hope here.
A day after giving birth to the healthy boy, she and her husband finally agree on just the right name. It will be the last, strong word on what’s happened, they reason.
They announce it, and the whispers along the hospital halls become a chattering chorus as the news makes the rounds.
The child will be officially registered with the local government as Zhen Yang, which means “Earthquake Sunshine.”
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Burnett_Thane/2008/06/19/5920731-sun.php
