Catastrophe snuffs torchbearer's joy

LUIS Hong-Sanchez remembers the excitement he felt when selected from a field of 261 candidates to be one of just eight expatriate Olympic torchbearers.
But when he carried the torch in Jinggangshan, the second leg of the relay in Jiangxi Province, three days after the deadly Wenchuan earthquake, his elation was tempered by the magnitude of the disaster.
"It is hard to describe my feelings," said the multilingual 15-year-old.
"I had been looking forward to the moment holding the torch. But it is always really sad to know that people are dying."
Born to a Chinese father and Colombian mother in Evanston, Illinois, Luis moved to China with his parents when he was 3 months old.
He is now in 8th grade at a high school in Zhuhai.
Fluent in Chinese, English and Spanish, he hoped to translate for Colombian athletes during the upcoming Olympics, but does not meet the minimum age requirement of 18.
"Being chosen as a torchbearer helped fulfill my wish," he said. "But there have been so many sad things happening recently -- the train crash (on March 14 in Shandong Province), the cyclone in Myanmar, and now the earthquake."
Luis said had learned about the destructive power of earthquakes, particularly the one that in hit Tangshan, Hubei Province, some 30 years ago. A quake of 8.0 will cause severe damage over a 100-mile radius, for instance, while one of 9.0 would devastate almost everything within 1,000 miles.
"That's all very sad," he said. "But it is even more heart-breaking when we see on television how people die and suffer during disasters."
Soon after his arrival in Jinggangshan, Luis joined other torchbearers in donating money.
"It is not a big sum, but after that I feel a little bit better," he said.