Thursday, May 22, 2008

Food for Thought

In Yingxiu, people who had lost everything kept trying to press food and water on
me. One old woman mourning her foster daughter had -- unbeknown to me-- told her husband to prepare me a bowl of noodles while I was interviewing her.

When he brought it over, I tried hard to refuse. Guilt about eating refugees' food was the last emotion I wanted to add to the mix that often threatened to engulf me.

But they were so insistent -- and worried I was rejecting the food because I thought it was dirty -- I felt I had no choice.

I wolfed the noodles down, embarrassed but grateful after 24 hours of biscuits and peanuts. I gave them some money in return, although there was nothing to buy and no one to buy it from.


~Emma Graham-Harrison, Reuters Press
Full story here
Hundreds of Chinese orphaned by the devastating 1976 Tangshan earthquake have offered to take care of victims of last week's devastating tremor in Sichuan, state media said on Thursday.

And more than 300 children orphaned in the Lijiang earthquake of 1996 have donated a year's pocket money.
~Nick Macfie, Reuters Press
Full story here
And here I am wondering about how to save money and splurge it on myself. Just to illustrate my point from the previous post.

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