Word: lu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Father While Zhang works to rebuild Beichuan, Lu Shihua toils to figure out why the town collapsed. The single father lost his only child, daughter Lu Fang, when the Beichuan No. 1 Middle School crumbled. His wife had died 16 years earlier giving birth to her and Lu had resolved to raise the girl on his own. Friends and relatives, including his mother-in-law, offered to help the farmer find a new bride. "I turned them all down," he says. "I could not risk any possibility of my daughter being mistreated by a stepmother...
...with a similar determination that Lu fights for an answer to why the Beichuan No. 1 Middle School caved in, crushing his daughter. Lu had just had lunch with her in town an hour before the quake struck. He felt the earth move as he waited for a bus back to their mountain village. Rocks tumbled down from a nearby peak, but as soon as the tremors eased he ran to the school. "The five-story building was completely flattened and young, broken bodies were everywhere," he says. "There were parents here and there, crying and digging for their children...
...Four days later Lu found his daughter's body in the rubble of the school. He identified her by a pair of cloth shoes, which had been handmade by her grandmother. "Just what evil have I done to deserve this?" he asks. "I already feel very guilty for my wife's death - she died giving birth to my daughter. For my daughter, I had not gotten close to any woman for 10 years, and now she is taken away from me, too." A few days after identifying his child's corpse, Lu posted petitions at earthquake shelters calling...
...local authorities began blocking access to the sites of demolished schools where parents and journalists would gather. The government offered compensation to parents, hush money that reportedly ran as high as $14,000 in exchange for a promise to keep quiet. Those that didn't acquiesce faced official intimidation. Lu says police frequently questioned him and demanded that he cease his calls for justice. The only shop with a fax in his village has been told to not let him send documents. Nevertheless, Lu continues. In late October he received a statement from Beichuan officials denying any flaws...
...Shopkeeper A short walk from where Lu's daughter died, a temporary town has sprouted. Nearly 4,000 residents from the mountainside village of Tangjiashan, which was destroyed in a landslide, now live in makeshift houses with gray, Styrofoam-lined aluminum walls and concrete floors. A school, bank, police station and local government headquarters are all packed into these oversized gray boxes...