I stood with my students today in respectful silence sharing the grief of those who have lost loved ones. Let's focus on what we can do to help rebuild Sichuan rather than waste energy on criticizing.

What others do is their business. Even though I am a laowai, or expat, Chengdu is my home - our thoughts are with the survivors, rescuers and all those giving their time for the common good.

Leonard

on China Daily website

I stood today along a roadside, across the street from an elementary school and watched in silence as drivers pressed against their horns.

No traffic jam, no annoyed driver trying to get ahead or beside or around some obstacle. The men playing Chinese chess stopped and held their expressions. The workers from the roadside shops all stood side by side and looked forward, heads tilted downward in common contemplation. No bicycles passed, no cars moved, no pedestrians walked by.

For the first time in my life in Beijing, time stood still. For these three minutes the air, the precious space of painful awareness of the souls lost and the suffering spirits of the survivors was given our collective respect.

As if suspended, the time seemed long and yet not nearly, not nearly long enough. First a car drove by, then slowly people moved a little. Then one woman jostled her keys and walked past me. I felt as if I should go, yet I didn't want to.

Foreign_friend

On China Daily website 

On Monday night residents in Jinan light candles to pray for earthquake victims.

I have been to China twice and loved it.

We are going again in the fall, and I cry every night as I read the stories and see the pictures from each day's search for survivors.

China is one of the sweetest places on the planet. We have adopted two girls from Hunan and our son is waiting for us in Zhejiang. I see their beautiful faces in every child in every quake news story and it just breaks my heart. To think of the families that have been ripped apart, it is just too horrible.

I wish that US media outlets would cover the quake as well as the China Daily news. But most people here have never been to China. So how would they know what they are seeing anyway? You have to have been to China to really understand how big this disaster really was.

I wish all of the people in China peace and healing. Much love from Oregon.

Cynthia

On China Daily website

Editor: Ding Yujie