Several folks posted their experiences on the earthquake and how they felt at the time. In Beijing, these descriptions have lost a great deal of interest, I suppose, during the past 24 hours or so as we have learned more about what is going on closer to the epicenter.
Therefore, I won't bother to rehash what went on yesterday too much. I do wish that I had been online at the time, but I have been essentially cut off since last Saturday from posting anything for technical reasons.
A couple of anecdotes, however:
1. CCTV stands out. I work in the Kerry Centre, which is just across the street from the CCTV building (still under construction). As Josh wisely noted, that thing doesn't look all that stable; many of us standing downstairs were looking rather warily over at the construction site, the cranes, looking for anyone still up there working, etc.
2. Twitter. Lots of buzz about mobile devices and communication yesterday, including how the gov't used SMS to get in touch with some folks. I heard from quite a number of people about how Twitter showed off its usefulness quite nicely. The peer pressure is getting quite unbearable, so I will be taking the Twitter plunge this week, time permitting. (More on that later.)
3. The rumor mill. There is no place in the world where there are more rumors that travel so swiftly than in China, and after hearing yesterday (within an hour of the event) that there would be aftershocks between 10 and 12 last night, my wife insisted that we vacate the apartment at that time. This is the reason why I found myself eating dim sum, admittedly this was not a bad thing, late last night at the Golden Tripod. And today I'm kinda sleepy as a result.
4. Keeping score. Why does the media have this fascination on keeping score with respect to casualties? Does it matter if we know within two hours of a natural disaster how many people may have died? No one knows at that time, so the guesses are all wildly off. Stupid.
OK, that's enough of that. For anyone who cares, I will post Part III of my look at China's Soft Power (a U.S. government report) in a few minutes.