CHRISTCHURCH

It's easy to write, as I did  when beginning this blog, that Christchurch had been 'devastated' by the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. But it wasn't until I got here that I actually appreciated the enormity of what has happened.

Jelly city cartoon

We arrived late Saturday afternoon and went to our hotel in the city centre. After the long flight we needed some exercise so we went out for a walk in the evening. We saw that Christchurch is like a patient who has suffered a catastrophic failure of vital functions. It's heart had been attacked; hardly a building in the centre has survived. Either they stand boarded up, crumbling and abandoned or they have been demolished and only vacant lots remain. The centre was virtually deserted. Occasionally we saw a flicker of life; some traffic on a road that has not been closed off, a burst of fireworks in a park to celebrate Chinese New Year, an isolated bar full of noisy young people. But these seemed like merely the flicker of an eyelash or the twitch of a finger in a patient in a coma; not a certain sign of recovery.

Damaged cathedral

Closed road and empty abandoned buildings

In the middle of the night we found we were both awake and listening - to the silence; there was not a sound of any kind to be heard. Just total, dead, silence.

But this morning, Sunday, we went out again and realised that our first impressions had been wrong. The patient is putting up a tremendous fight. To replace the ruined theatre there's a circular, open air performance area, its walls made of piled up pallets. To replace shops and cafes there's a collection of brightly painted containers in which holes have been made for windows and doors. Some buildings have been rebuilt; our hotel was the first to re-open, in 2012, after the earthquakes. A temporary cathedral has been built using gigantic cardboard tubes as structural support, to replace the old one which was badly damaged and has been deconsecrated.

Shipping container mall

Pallet performance area

Yes, the city is still grieving; there are reminders all round it of how deeply the destruction has been felt. I found the  most moving to be the collection of 189 empty chairs, all painted white, representing those who died. But building work is moving ahead, new people are moving in; normal life is returning.