Eclipse July 22, 2009

Wednesday, July 22, 2009
9:36:25 AM

I have just experienced a total eclipse of the sun in Chengdu, China. The day dawned grey and muggy. I did not sleep well wondering what this would be like, hoping I would find the right spot to experience and capture the event. I had not eaten right yesterday--mainly nut cookies and coffee, some fruit, soup, and noodles.

8:15 (roughly) I leave my room. I go to the first floor, out the door and up the steps of the soccer field, where some other soccer players were. It is dirty there to make notes, but I see some brief breaks in the clouds. I then made my way up the stairs to the second floor to my classroom.

8:21 Very humid--rained last night--ground is wet with puddles. Sky is uniformly light grey but I see a couple breaks in the clouds with a little blue, even bits of sunlight. I see two people looking out their windows at the sky--one from apartments across the street, one on the top floor of my building, the foreign students dormitory. My observations from the soccer steps--I wrote this in my classroom, Room 2017, with the big window open: very hot, humid, muggy. A sense of foreboding, oppression, anxiety, excitement, something about to happen--what??

8:32 Up elevator to 12th floor. I see a sleepy looking girl grab milk and maybe cereal from the kitchen and return to her room. Very hot. I walk quietly up the steps in the dark that lead to the roof. The door is locked--very dusty there. I try the large window where people hang sheets to dry (no clothes dryers in China)--I cannot open--grey, muggy. I find a smaller window at the end of a hall, open it, and look out. I take several pictures from this location. Grey smog-like clouds envelope the city. I can barely see apartments a half mile away. I see one person looking out an apartment window across the street. The usual crowd of morning commuters goes by--cabs, bikes, bicycles, cars, a small dog running after a motorized cycle. A police car passes by. Horns sound, different pitches and styles, breaks squeal. A man in Tibetan dress walks down an alley and turns in front of the fruit market. Many workers too, dodging traffic. It's always "heads up" here.

8:38 Very muggy--I have window open. Still on 12th floor, looking out. I notice five satellite dishes across from me about a quarter mile away and down several floors. I also see winding fancy steps to a rooftop garden a short distance away on a building maybe two or three stories high.

8:52 I take the elevator down to the 2nd floor to see if anyone has come by. And run into Katy ( grad student with baby) entering the 2nd floor. She says she woke her husband up to see the eclipse and hopes he will. No one else is around the second floor except an early class, not ours. I go back out to the steps up to the stadium entrance and again notice some breaks in the sky visible to my right.
I see my Chinese student Pan coming in on a bike. She puts her bike away and joins me on the steps. I see Eric, my American student--he goes to grab a snack, then to get his camera. Pan and I decide to walk two blocks further to where she saw the sun earlier, at a large intersection. I call Eric to let him know. On the way we run into Vivian, the USAC intern, who is hurrying in to work--she was not aware of the eclipse.

9:04 Now at the large intersection. Cars start to turn on headlights. More and more people are coming outdoors and looking at the sky: shopkeepers, people on the street. Cars begin pulling over, People are watching. A police car stops in front of us.

9:08 It's getting dark. Pan said it reminds her of 8 p.m. in the summer

9:09 Lights are visible in buildings like you see at night. A neon type sign lights up. Street lights turn on. Traffic is stopping more and more.

9:10 People are laughing. People are all over the place, stopping, talking, looking up. Cameras flash. It is like night. There is a collective sigh or moan: "Aaaaiiii!" During the darkness I take several pictures and a video. At some point Eric, my American student, appears. He says he has been taking pictures of the event, the lights, of Pan and me. Pan makes a call before Eric arrives to someone, maybe her mother, to ask if she is witnessing this. Pan also asks me if we will be safe--will there be a huge storm?

9:14 It's getting light again. People begin to move again. Signs are still lit up though. It now seems like 7:00 at night.

9:14 (a few seconds later) Light is returning fast. I see the Chinese flag flying--red color clearly visible. Traffic is moving again.

9:15 It's getting lighter faster and faster.

9:16 Daylight. People are moving again, on their way to work mainly. The city is again in motion.

9:17 Many street lights suddenly go off. I wonder if they are controlled by the amount of light. Police still watch the sky and the event.

9:18 Police drive off. I still see a few vehicles with headlights on, such as taxies.

9:19 Daylight returns more and more. I feel a few big raindrops. The rest of the street lights go off. It begins to rain. People are moving on. I decide to return to the dorm. I open my umbrella as the rain increases. I notice a woman combing here daughter's hair; a kitten is nearby and I want to ask her if the cat reacted to the eclipse but I don’t know how.

The rain picks up as I walk back to the International Students Dorm. I see "Big John" from Minnesota (American USAC student) and ask him where he viewed the eclipse--he says he was walking to school. He lives in an apartment. He says he wished that the street lights had not come on. He adds that some of the USAC students went out of the city to view the eclipse. I say I want to talk to them because I wonder how viewing the eclipse out of town and greater darkness will compare from viewing it in the city of Chengdu.

I return to my room. Now the storm really picks up. I can hear the rain coming down.

I review my photos. The pictures of Pan and I are out of focus, but my video is good and shows that it was night in Chengdu at a little after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, July 22.

10:06 Finally I see some coverage of the eclipse on English TV; this is China's official government station, sort of like the CNN of China but it's heavily government controlled. The video of the event that I see was prerecorded, at 9:07. I am surprised that TV doesn't provide moment to moment coverage of a huge event as would happen in the US. I guess even an eclipse has to go through censors.

10:15 TV coverage from town of Wuhan--picture of the total eclipse, pre-recorded. British accent on Chinese reporter: "This is very exciting. I have never seen this in my life." Constant warnings not to look directly at the sun.

The reporters have western eyes--I think they have had plastic surgery, and they use makeup to make their eyes look more open. I have seen just now both a female and male reporter with rounder eyes, less narrow and straight.

10:19 I have almost finished typing this and now the rain has ended--another grey morning in Chengdu.

Official eclipse factsAn eclipse actually runs over two and a half hours or more. As the sun moves west, each area experiences the eclipse and its stages later in the day--and locations to the east, like India, viewed it sooner than Chengdu
These were the times for the eclipse in Chengdu:
1st contact: 8:02
2nd contact: 9:09
3rd contact: 9:14
4th contact: 10:25

Total darkness = 6 minutes.

In Chengdu, the darkness was predicted for 9:11-9:14. That is essentially what my notes show.
10:31 The eclipse has passed completely for 500 years…