serious

This morning Sarah sent me a message saying there were crowds gathering outside the McDonald's protesting the fact that the company hadn't given enough money for earthquake relief. The people had apparently dispersed by the afternoon, and there were a number of guards present afterwards.

BeiHu park is full of tents and other makeshift camping setups out of the fear of major aftershocks reported by the government media. It's almost ridiculous at this point, you really want to go up to some of the people and ask them what they're doing.

I met up with Julien and the other PC volunteers at night to say farewell to Nanchong's only Frenchman. We decided to go to unimart and purchase some ice cream, and passed by McDonald's on the way there at around 10:00. There was already a large group of people assembled outside the main entrance. Most of the 100 or so people gathered were in their 20s and 30s, and stood around talking and looking inside the restaurant. McDonald's had apparently been closed earlier in the day because of the protesters preventing workers and patrons from entering, and the lights were still off from before.

A McDonald's employee had put up two posters near the front doors illustrating how the company had actually donated quite a bit of money for earthquake relief efforts. At some point in the day someone had broken the main McDonald's neon marquee above the front doors and pulled the promotional posters off the walls. There were guards and cops around the crowd to make sure it didn't happen again.

The protesters (I guess you could call them that) weren't really doing anything. There was a bunch of standing and talking, but very little action. When the four of us arrived, we were immediately surrounded. We asked questions about what was taking place to a Nanchongren who's English was fairly fluent. Eventually someone made a very direct comment that because we were Americans we probably had lots of money; forget the fact that we were Peace Corps volunteers making less than the person who shouted at us.

In any event, we decided to leave after that comment seeing as there were people around who were clearly itching to get things started and being present only made it more likely we'd be put in a precarious position.