A Collective Cry of Grief

This afternoon at 2:28pm, exactly one week after the magnitude 8.0 earthquake destroyed so many lives and communities, China asked its 1.2 billion people to observe three minutes of silence before sounding their car, truck, train, ship and air-raid horns in a collective cry of grief.

China also said it would order all flags to be flown at half staff and would suspend for three days the Olympic torch relay. China's missions around the world also were advised to observe the tributes and to offer condolence books for those who wished to express their sympathies. For the mourning period, the State Council, or Cabinet, also ordered all websites to remove entertainment and game sections and redirect users to pages dedicated to victim commemoration.

Yesterday, it raised the death toll to 32,476 in what has become a daily grim ritual of moving 3,000 to 4,000 from the missing column to the dead column. As health concerns intensified and aid poured in from across China and the world, the three days of mourning will commemorate the likely 50,000 deaths from this massive earthquake.