Stopping for a moment

To the editor:
    At 14:28 hours China time on a beautiful afternoon, I stood with my students as the banshee chorus wailed its grief. Car horns, ship horns, air raid sirens, and any other form of alert signal sounded across this country.  More than a billion people stood at a standstill for three minutes. Even while I was in the classroom it was not hard to see hundreds of people on campus standing silently, most with tears falling one by one down their cheeks and unto the ground. China is in mourning.
    There are times when the best lesson comes when the teacher shuts up and leaves the teaching to his students. This was such a moment. On Mondays I have a class of students from Inner Mongolia University — here on a two-year exchange program — with which to work. These students and I have had our share of ups and downs as we have sought to learn from each other. On the 12th I had ended class early. On the 19th my students called me and said they wanted me to just be in the class.
    I had already learned about the national moment of mourning for victims of the deadly May 12 Chengdu earthquake and its aftermath. I had even prepared a lesson on some of the English terms that become part of any crisis. By the time I had arrived at the classroom the students had relocated to one of the multi-media classrooms and begun preparations for their ceremony. Litchi (Lee Chee), the computer wiz, was hard at work loading a short program on the tragedy. Other students had brought three flags, mourning squares, and four candles. As we began the class I helped get the equipment turned on and then I sat at the back of the room and watched.
    Two of the young men in the room held the national flags high. They would do that for the entire program, almost 90 minutes. Other students handed out large and small squares of mourning paper.
    Mourning paper is brightly colored. On the larger squares students write encouraging words. Large and small squares are folded in the shape of cranes, a sacred bird for the Chinese, and bunched together. As the tables filled with tiny cranes yet another student went around with a sack to gather the finished cranes.
    Drawing the curtains to dampen the sun, the students lit four simple candles. On the blackboard they wrote in Chinese and English, Wen Chuan: we are with you. The Chinese letters in red, outlined in white. Litchi, began her talk about the grim realities. Other students joined to express their condolences. Then we put money into a red colored container to send to the relief effort.
    September 9th, 2001, my brother and I were sitting in a paddle boat watching the sky over Washington, D.C. and joking about some beavers that attacked the cherry trees given by Japan to the US. Behind us was the Jefferson Memorial, a beautiful autumn day. That was a Sunday. Tuesday followed and things changed. During the days that followed our nation grieved. It was both chilling and thrilling.
    As I heard the sirens start their wail I saw in front of me a changing China. One China united in grief. Through the breaks in the curtain, the sight of the street sweepers, guards, and other personnel standing in the sun spoke volumes for the decency of other people. Our grief runs deep and yet the grief has only begun.