Philosophize This : Symbolism Over Substance
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A Chinese school, shored up by its principal, survived where others fell
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/15/asia/quake.php

SANGZAO, China: The students lined up row by row on the outdoor
basketball courts of Sangzao Middle School in the minutes after the
earthquake. When the head count was complete, their fate was clear: All
2,323 were alive.

Parents covered in blood and dust hugged them. Everyone cried. So did
the school principal, Ye Zhiping.

"That was the single most joyful thing," he said.

Given that about 10,000 other children were crushed in their classrooms
during the devastating quake on May 12, the survival of so many students
in Sangzao counts as a minor miracle.

Students and parents credit that to "Angel Ye."

Nervous about the shoddiness of the school building, Ye scraped together
more than 400,000 yuan, or about $60,000, over three years to renovate.
He had workers widen concrete pillars and insert iron rods into them. He
demanded stronger balcony railings. He demolished a bathroom that had
been weakened by water.

His school in Peace County very likely withstood the 8.0-magnitude
earthquake because he pushed the county government to upgrade it. Just
32 kilometers, or 20 miles, north the collapse of Beichuan Middle School
buried 1,000 students and teachers.

Ye's tale sheds light on the lax building codes in this mountainous
corner of Sichuan Province and what might have been done to address
well-known shortcomings. In his case, a personal commitment and a
seemingly petty amount of cash sufficed to avert tragedy.

"We learned a lesson from this earthquake: The standards for schools
should have been improved," Ye, 55, said in a recent interview. "The
standards now are still not enough."

Ye not only shored up the building's structure but also had students and
teachers prepare for a disaster. They rehearsed an emergency evacuation
plan twice a year. Because of that, students and teachers say, everyone
managed to flee in less than two minutes on May 12.

"We're very thankful," Qiu Yanfang, 62, the grandmother of a student,
said as she sat outside the school knitting a brown sweater. "The
principal helped ease the nation's loss, both the psychological loss and
the physical loss."

The Chinese government estimates that more than 7,000 schoolrooms
collapsed in the earthquake. The widespread destruction has prompted
grieving parents to take to the streets to demand investigations, and
that in turn has become the biggest political challenge to government
officials in the aftermath of the earthquake. This month, the police
began clamping down on the protests.

It has been difficult to establish responsibility for the school
collapses, partly because it is unclear in many cases which level of
government is responsible for the original school construction and for
later inspections.

The building codes that Ye criticized had been set by the central
government in Beijing, he said. While county education officials did not
take the initiative in improving Sangzao Middle School, they submitted
to Ye's requests and gave him some money, he said.

Huang Zhichun, an official in the county education department, said by
telephone: "Based on the fact that so many schools have collapsed, the
standard is not good enough. The central government sets the standard."

Government officials in Beijing and Sichuan have said they are
investigating the collapses. In an acknowledgment of the weakness of
building codes in the countryside, the National Development and Reform
Commission said on May 27 that it had drafted an amendment to improve
construction standards for primary and middle schools in rural areas.
Experts are reviewing the draft, the commission said.

They could do worse than consult with Ye. A squat man who speaks in
sharp bursts, he now lives with his wife in a refugee camp of green
tents on the school's basketball courts. He started working at the
school 30 years ago as an English teacher and has taught in every
classroom. Some students say he is more playful and less strict than the
teachers.

Sangzao is a farming town of 30,000 where merchants sell vegetables from
blankets on a rutted market road. It has two middle schools - one
administered by the township, where a dormitory collapsed during the
earthquake, and the other administered by the county. Ye works in the
second, where families from across northern Sichuan send their children
because of the school's reputation.

A large billboard on the school grounds lists the names of 90 students
who got top scores on a national exam last year. The school is one of
the largest in Peace County. It has a half-dozen dormitory buildings and
two classroom buildings, all five stories or lower. One of the classroom
buildings was constructed after 2000, the other between 1983 and 1985.

The older one worried Ye when he became principal 12 years ago.

It is a four-story white building with large tinted glass windows and
blue metal railings running along balconies with classrooms.

"Quality inspectors were supposed to be here to oversee construction of
this building," he said. "When the foundation was laid, they should have
been here. When the concrete was put into the pillars, they should have
been here. But they weren't. In the end, no government official dared to
come inspect this building because it was built without any standards."

Ye walked down the hallways with a visitor and pointed to the corners
where ceiling met wall. He said workers had stuffed canvas bags and
trash into those crevices to seal them. In addition, he said, the
surfaces of the walls were coarse rather than smooth, a sign of shoddy
construction.

The classrooms opened onto balconies overlooking the schoolyard. But the
balcony railings were made of cement, not metal. They were shaky and too
short, Ye said. They also lacked vertical pillars for support.

"I was among the first teachers who moved into this building, and I was
pretty young," Ye said. "Our awareness of safety wasn't the same as now."

He said his attitude changed after he became principal.

"If I knew there was a hidden danger, and I didn't do anything about it,
then I would be the one responsible," he said.

From 1996 to 1999, Ye oversaw a complete overhaul. He said he pestered
county officials for money. Eventually the education department gave him
about 400,000 yuan. It was a troublesome process because the county was
poor and thus tight with money, Ye said, but officials saw the need to
ensure the safety of children.

So the renovations began. Most crucial were changes made to concrete
pillars and floor panels. Each classroom had four rectangular pillars
that were thickened so they jutted from the walls. Up and down the
pillars, workers drilled holes and inserted iron reinforcing rods
because the original ones were not enough, Ye said. The concrete slab
floors were secured so they would be able to withstand intense shaking.

Structural engineers and earthquake experts outside China who have
examined photographs of collapsed schools point to two critical flaws: a
lack of adequate iron reinforcing rods and poorly built hollow concrete
slab floors.

Ye said that construction codes improved after 2000 and that buildings
were now supposed to be rated a 6 or 7 for earthquake preparedness.

"But we see from this earthquake that the standard should be lifted to
11 or 12," he said.

Each classroom in the main school building holds about 60 students. Each
room is now a frozen tableau of 2:28 p.m. on May 12. Backpacks and
textbooks are scattered across tables and chairs. A bag of oranges sits
on a desk.

Students said they dove under desks when the tremor hit. Then teachers
led them onto the basketball courts outside.

"Many parents ran to the school afterward," said Yang Shihui, 40, an
English teacher. "One mother started hugging her daughter and saying,
'Oh my daughter.' The daughter was fine. It was actually the mother who
was covered in dirt and bleeding."

Ye was in a city about 50 kilometers away when the ground began shaking.

"On my way back, I saw that many buildings had been seriously
destroyed," Ye said. "I was pretty concerned. But when I saw that all of
my students were safe, I was very happy." These days, students dart in
and out of the school to grab textbooks, ducking beneath a thin blue
ribbon with a handwritten sign that says "Danger." To them, the building
seems sturdy enough.

But Ye said it would be torn down, never again used for classes.