Revisiting the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake

Today has been another quite full and exhausting day.

We started off with a bowl of noodles and some plain donuts. Then we set out to explore Tangshan and look at numerous sites showing the surface rupture from the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. The first was the site of an old middle school that was demolished during the earthquake. The government has preserved this site as a sort of testament to the damage caused by the earthquake. Currently, a building belonging to the China Earthquake Administration (ECA) is there. Below, you can see a pipe displaced from the earthquake. The fault runs horizontally across the picture. On the right, there is a small wall that was offset. If you can't see it, know that it runs along the fence on the left-hand side of the picture.
The photo below shows the ECA building. On the left of the picture is a seismic station that monitors horizontal motion across the fault. There are five surrounding the fault at this site. This location ended up looking like the best site to trench at, and we will be returning there as soon as permission comes from the government (hopefully within 2 days or so). Likely, we will move out of our fabulous hotel and into the ECA building to work. The people in the photo include my adviser, his colleagues, and various important government contacts. They are all very excited to see our work completed.
The second site was at a private villa. There are some rows of trees that were offset during the earthquake (the rows are outlined with wood rails). The family who lives there was very enthusiastic about having us work there. Despite already being very wealthy, they would want to preserve our trench and turn it into a park so they could make more money. Although this would be a good site, they had too many restrictions on how close we could get to the trees and it will not work out. I'll post some pictures of the villa anyway, since it was INCREDIBLY gorgeous! They were very hospitable and even had us sit and have tea with the property manager for about 20 minutes.

Our next stop was incredible. We went to the future site of the city's big Tanghsan Earthquake memorial. An old train/steel factory was located there, but almost completely collapsed during the earthquake. Luckily, only 11 people were killed (arond 250,000 people died in the earthquake). The government has preserved the ruins of the steel factory and is builing a $500 million dollar memorial there. We trapsed around the site for a while... Here are some photos from it:

Then we had lunch at a pond. The private dining rooms were in the middle of the pond! Yet again, everything was very ornate, and of what I could eat, everything was delicious!

After lunch, we went to a few more sites, came back to the hotel, went shopping for some supplies, then had another very ornate dinner. I didn't eat very much, as these ornate meals are getting a bit exhausting. It's very nice to see how much people are interested in my being here, though. I feel very, very welcome and that these people want to see our work succeed.

I'm sooo exhausted right now, and need to hop in the shower and go to sleep. I wanted to be in bed by now! I'm going to get up at 6:30 and hopefully have a Skype date with Mom and Dad before getting to work. Tomorrow looks like another big day!