China's tofu construction

A rescue worker's lament while searching the rubble in Sichuan. Plus: Three minutes of no searching, in honor of the dead

Published May 23, 2008 7:00PM (EDT)

A rescue worker digging through the rubble of a school that collapse in the Sichuan earthquake, killing 278 students exclaims:

"It's this tofu dregs construction! Inside the concrete, there's only wire, not a single bit reinforcing bar."

The school was built in 1994. (From Southern Weekend, translated by China Digital Times.)

And in other earthquake-related news, China Vortex features a striking, and humbling, chart showing Google China's search logs for the afternoon of May 19th, when China observed three minutes of silence in memory of the dead.

As China Vortex observes, "The graph says it all."


By Andrew Leonard

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21.

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