Calming words for an injured quake victim.	Beijingers gathered in Chaoyang Park for a candlelight vigil during the national mourning period.	Soldiers help local farmers set up tents along the road between Hanwang and Yinghua.

A farmer squatting amid the shambles that was once his home is philosophical. “I am not frightened,” he says. “I can rebuild the house later. As long as my family is alive, sufficiently fed and clothed, there is nothing more I aspire to.”

When the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake struck on May 12, most of the village’s 2,100 residents were attending an outdoor wedding, miraculously escaping the disaster through sheer good fortune. “About 300 people in my village were killed. That was enough,” the farmer says. “But the rescuers were here in just five hours.”

One of his neighbors was not so lucky. He rushed to the school of his nine-year-old son as soon as the ground stopped shaking, only to discover to his horror that the schoolhouse, like so many others throughout the quake-affected region, had collapsed. He managed to dig several children out of the rubble with his bare hands, but rescuers who arrived a short while later found his boy, pale and cold.

Nor did the tragedy end there. His elder son, 15, was also killed in the collapse of the town’s middle school. In minutes, he had lost both his children.

Praying for a Safe Return

Mianzhu, 30 kilometers from the earthquake’s epicenter in Wenchuan, was one of the worst-hit areas. By 6:00 p.m. on May 15, the county’s death toll had reached 4,450, with more than 20,000 injured and 70 percent of the rural homes demolished.

The Mianzhu-based Dongfang Steam Turbine Plant is one of the three major manufacturers of electricity generating equipment in China. The earthquake brought down one-third of its buildings, and buried 4,000 of its 7,000 employees.

In the ruins of the demolished factory, I met an elderly woman searching for information about her son, who was believed to be somewhere beneath the debris. She pointed to a twisted bicycle, recognizing it as the one on which her son commuted daily between work and home, and tears welled up in her eyes as she prayed for his safe return. Holding her hands, I did not know what I could say to comfort her.

Giant cranes soon rumbled onto the scene. Relief efforts had been ongoing for nearly 70 hours, but progress was slow due to the almost impenetrable tangle of heavy cement blocks and twisted steel girders. The relief workers looked weary but resolute. They had been toiling for several days and nights, and factory spokesmen had said that 80 to 90 percent of the company’s employees had been rescued. The dead had been buried, the badly hurt sent to hospitals, and those with minor wounds housed in tents set up in an open field next to the factory.

In the downtown area of Mianzhu, tens of thousands of people were living outdoors days after the quake. Shelter, food, drinking water and medicine were all in extremely short supply.

At the relief materials distribution center in Hanwang Town, trucks streamed in, dropping off loads of instant noodles, vegetables, bottled water and clothing before turning around to pick up more. Everywhere one looked, work proceeded in a quick and orderly fashion.

Life in a Tent Camp

On the trip from Hanwang to Ying-hua, Shifang City, I passed by one village after another that had been leveled to the ground. Farmers were setting up makeshift tents with the help of soldiers, and lined up to receive food, water and clothing from local relief authorities.

Liu Jinhong, a worker at the nearby Yingfeng Chemical Plant, was drying her clothes amid the ruins. She said more than 30 of the 300 people in her village were killed, including her nephew. Her mother had broken her arm, and had been operated on.

Liu said she was grateful to the rescue workers, who arrived on the scene on the second day of the disaster, and said that food and water was now arriving regularly. But she said she was struggling to restore some normality to her life. She raked the ruins of her home in search of her belongings, and erected a makeshift shelter against the weather. The clothes she hung out on a line to dry fluttered like flags against the backdrop of the destruction, austere symbols of dignity and hope in the face of unimaginable adversity.

A team of rescue parachutists who had been air-dropped into the area were helping villagers build tents nearby. They had just completed a days-long mission of searching for trapped victims in the region.

In downtown Shifang, the Central Plaza had been transformed into an immense tent camp, one of 29 across the city. By May 15, it had taken in 2,600 people. On the fringe of the plaza were piles of relief materials. Distribution was underway and was being conducted in good order. Interim clinics were ready to provide first aid, and medical workers sprayed disinfectant on a regular basis to prevent any outbreak of disease. Police patrolled the area day and night, and insurance and telecom companies provided around-the-clock service at the site. The official in charge of the camp told me that it was operating smoothly, and that its occupants would soon be transferred to safe zones in neighboring regions.

Dozens of volunteers were stacking food and water and keeping order in the plaza. Li Yangjun, a student of the Sichuan Agricultural University, was on the day shift. His replies to my questions were mostly brief, and full of concern for the people he was looking after. “They are from the mountains, where all the homes were wrecked. They have enough food and water here, and can take showers at the construction site opposite.” Li said he had only joined the team two days earlier, but had fit in quickly.

A group of young people gathered in front of a large television in a corner of the plaza, watching the latest report on the relief work. Others sat on the grass, exchanging quiet words. On their faces I read fatigue, relief for having survived, as well as angst for their loved ones.

A young mother was feeding her three-year-old instant noodles. She and the boy had managed to crawl out of her fallen home after the quake in Yinghua Town. They were fine, except for her leg injury. The boy sweated over the spicy, beef-flavored noodles, but was obviously enjoying it, flashing bright smiles at me throughout my talk with his mother.

Happiness out of Bitterness

Li Wenying, in Yingxiu Town, Dujiangyan City, considers herself extremely lucky. She was supposed to work the night shift on May 12, but forgot to adjust her alarm clock, which woke her at 2:05 p.m. Unable to fall asleep again, she got up and went to the bathroom, and the earthquake struck the very next second. The beams in the walls of her small bathroom saved her life. When she was rescued, she was immediately rushed to the Huaxi Hospital in Chengdu for treatment of her injured arms and legs.

The hospital was in battle readiness when I arrived. Whenever an ambulance pulled in, its siren blaring, half a dozen medical workers and volunteers dashed forward, unloading the patients and whisking them to a line of tents, sterilizing their wounds and cleaning them up before sending them into the operating rooms. Meanwhile, the ambulance was disinfected, and the patients’ dirty clothes and sheets were disposed of.

Shi Yingkang, president of the Huaxi Hospital, was issuing directions at the site. His eyes were blood-shot. Since the afternoon of May 12, he said, he and his staff had worked for six days and nights with little sleep, receiving 1,279 seriously wounded people from the disaster zones, such as Dujiangyan, Wenchuan, Beichuan and Shifang.

Medical workers were pushing a group of patients on gurneys to the hospital gate. After their operations, they were to be transferred to other hospitals to recuperate. Among them was a 16-year-old boy, Tang Wei, a student of the Xuankou Middle School in Wenchuan. Despite the fresh operation on his waist, he looked calm and determined.

Liu Zongchang, a math teacher in Hanwang Town, Mianzhu City, suffered a serious pelvis wound in the quake, which prevented him from moving. He was first sent to a local relief station, and soon after to Huaxi Hospital. His two sisters were with him. One of them described with tears of gratitude in her eyes how the government had provided them with all living necessities, and how the hospital had even made chicken broth for her brother.

Volunteers were also present at the hospital, offering to look for family members of quake victims. The chaos caused by the calamity and the disruption of communications meant that many had been out of touch with loved ones for days. The volunteers toured each floor of the hospital, recording information on each patient and trying to pass along messages home.

Volunteers Mobilized

Volunteers turned out in significant numbers to complement the efforts of relief workers. Yang Na, a 25-year-old freelancer from Jiangsu Province, called for a volunteers’ action on the Internet immediately after the quake, and received more than 1,000 responses within a day. Yang and five others flew to Chengdu on May 15 as the third group of volunteers she mobilized. They brought with them relief materiel from the China Children and Teenagers’ Fund. Even in the minutes before the plane took off, Yang and Deng Shuang continued exchanging calls with the volunteers who had gone to Sichuan in previous groups and who were ready to go from various localities.

“We had little sleep after May 13, because we had so many phone calls to make and answer. Thousands of people applied to be quake volunteers, but only those with relief experience and skills were chosen – mostly demobilized soldiers and medical workers. We all rushed through some basics on first aid,” Yang said.

Yang discussed the relief plan with her friends throughout the bumpy flight, not even finding the time to eat anything. The 13 Tangshan farmers who helped in the cold snap in southern China earlier this year also arrived in Anxian County, Sichuan. “The moment I saw the quake scenes on TV, I had the urge to act,” Song Zhiyong said. He called together his friends and collected the RMB 5,000 in cash he had at home, and they all set out for Sichuan.

“I don’t have much money, but plenty of experience. I know how to survive fallen buildings, as well as how to save the trapped. Because we Tangshan people experienced a major quake personally.”

Song’s team first went to Beichuan. At the site of Beichuan Middle School, they found three girls under the debris. With utmost care, they dug an opening in the ruins, removing the bricks and stones piece by piece, and eventually built a tunnel to the trapped students. The three girls were all rescued safely. Later, Song’s team traveled to Anxian, joining local rescuers searching for survivors as thousands of smaller aftershocks continued to shake the ruins.

Repaying an Old Kindness

Seven in Song’s team were orphaned by the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, and the rest were all survivors. No one is able to understand the needs and suffering of earthquake victims better than the people of Tangshan, where 240,000 lives were lost 32 years ago, and who were helped by the generous aid that streamed in from around the country. Now they felt an obligation to repay the kindness. The city has shipped ambulances, large digging and cutting machines, motion detectors and other equipment to Sichuan, together with relief funds and volunteers.

Zhang Zhenhai, president of a tourism company in Tangshan, announced his desire to adopt 10 quake orphans. He pledged a house of 300 square meters and an annual subsidy of RMB 100,000 for the children until they are able to live on their own. For those with physical and mental disabilities, he said he would provide lifetime care.

Another businessman, Zhang Xiangqing, president of an iron and steel company in Tianjin, and his wife donated RMB 100 million. A quake orphan himself, Mr. Zhang has been actively involved in charity programs since he made a fortune, giving out a total of RMB 38.5 million prior to the Sichuan earthquake.

As destructive as it was, the May 12 earthquake was nevertheless a reconfirmation of human kindness, fellowship and international solidarity. Although modernization and urbanization have reduced the level of interaction between individuals, the flame of humanity has never died out, and it continues to lead us to action whenever the need arises.