Love blooms among ruins of China quake, but patience is running out

Published on Saturday 3 January 2009 19:21

HE LOST his wife of 35 years when their home collapsed during the earthquake in May.

She lost her husband of 20 years the same day in a cascade of debris at a building site.

They are distant relatives from the same town whose eyes still fill with tears when they talk about their dead spouses.

But within months of the quake, the deadliest natural disaster to befall China in more than three decades, Jiang Zhongfu, 60, began courting Zhu Xiaoqiong, 42. Last month he moved into Zhu's prefabricated housing cube in a refugee camp in the hills of Beichuan.

"We're considering getting married," Jiang said as Zhu sat beside him, knitting a grey sweater.

More than seven months after the earthquake ravaged southwestern China, new couples like Jiang and Zhu are one sign that, psychologically at least, there have been the beginnings of a recovery. About 370 couples in the devastated county of Beichuan in Sichuan Province have registered to remarry, and the local government plans to hold a matchmaking fair soon, said Wang Hongfa, a county official.

But progress across the stricken region has been much slower in other ways. The earthquake left 88,000 people dead or missing and more than five million homeless. Now, many survivors are huddled in temporary shelters without jobs, trying to stay warm with little more than blankets and hot-water bottles handed out by the government.

Grey rows of prefabricated housing arranged into camps, some with as many as 10,000 residents, lie scattered across farm fields. Everywhere hang red banners extolling aid provided by the Communist Party. "The care of the party is our power," says one.

Yet late last year the vice governor of Sichuan Province said that survivors still needed 330,000 quilts and heating equipment to cope with the winter. The vice governor, Wei Hong, also said government financing would account for only a fifth of the estimated 300bn needed for reconstruction. The rest would have to come from loans and investments by private companies and state-owned enterprises, he said.

The authorities are encouraging survivors to build their own permanent homes using a government subsidy that averages 2,000 per household. Officials in the city of Mianyang, which oversees administration in a large swathe of the quake region, say construction has begun on 410,000 permanent homes in that area.

But in Beichuan, reconstruction has been particularly slow. Nestled deep in the mountainous folds of Sichuan Province, the county has become a symbol of the savagery of the quake. Nearly 20,000 out of a population of 180,000 were killed, and landslides along the steep valley walls surrounding the county seat buried half the town. A green chain-link fence topped with barbed wire prevents survivors from moving back into the town. Instead they live in purgatory, spread across 11 large camps.

"The pace of reconstruction is too slow," said Han Dongmei, 26, as she cradled her six-month-old daughter in a camp where hot water has been sporadic. "I want to move into a permanent home. The problem is they don't even have a plan yet."

On a hill above the town of Beichuan, enterprising residents sell earthquake souvenirs to scores of tourists who come each day to gawp at the ruins. Laminated photos and DVDs with grisly scenes of destruction go for 1 each, as do sets of incense sticks to burn in memory of the dead.

"I'm not afraid of ghosts here," said one survivor, a 17-year-old girl named Zhou Qiaoyun, as she stared down at the ruined town. "I've seen a lot of dead people. The day I escaped from Beichuan, you had to step on dead bodies to get out."

She had a stoic facade, but it broke down when a tourist asked her about the destruction of the town. She began weeping. Two aunts who lived with Qiaoyun died in the quake, she said, as did 90 of 1,000 students in her vocational school. Her parents left over the summer to find migrant work on the east coast. Qiaoyun now lives alone in a nearby camp and earns little more than 1.50 a day selling souvenirs. Most camp residents make do with just a small stipend from the government – 1 a day and some rice.

Some survivors are even poorer, those who live not in the camps but among the rubble in remote mountain villages. A few hike down from tarpaulin shelters each day to sell medicinal herbs and fruit to the tourists.

One farmer, He Yifu, said the government had given him 200 to help with repairs and promised that his village would be rebuilt in three years.

"The government pays attention to those living on the side of the road, not those far away," said He, 56.

He lives with his wife, who has had problems since the quake. "Her memory fades," he said. "She has a hard time remembering things."

The camps have taken on the air of permanent settlements. One near the entrance to Beichuan has a police station and an elementary school. The grocery store is hiring. There is a mental health clinic next to the party secretary's office.