Word: sichuan
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...convoy of 18 SUVs pulls to a halt on the narrow road above Sanjiang, Wenchuan county, Sichuan, the gleeful shrieks of an excited crowd float upwards through the autumnal mist. The vehicles have made the three-hour journey from the provincial capital Chengdu, spending two hours of it crawling through countryside affected by the cataclysmic earthquake in May. We say countryside - in fact, the view through the windows is an unsettling inversion of what the term normally evokes. Giant fissures sunder the hills and there are yawning voids where roads should be. Broad swaths of boulders and debris remain...
...getting closer to its head. A vehicle door finally swings open and Donatella Versace - of all people - shyly emerges from her sanctum of tinted windows and tobacco smoke. Standing in blonde tresses and heels, she is a fabulously incongruous sight here in the mountains. But the good villagers of Sichuan have no idea who she is. They are here, instead, to see her companion for the day - Li Lianjie, otherwise known as Jet Li. And when he appears before them, a great roar erupts...
...pictures of Sichuan, China, six months after the May 2008 earthquake devastated the region...
That survival instinct remains. Luo and her family put aside nearly every cent they earn. Her fiancé leaves each morning to find work on reconstruction projects. Although unemployment is as high as 80% in some areas of the Sichuan disaster zone, Yang says he doesn't have much difficulty finding jobs. Indeed, his 50-year-old father works with him, but the family wonders how much longer the father can handle manual labor. So Luo runs her small shop to save money for the future. "We don't have plans," she says. "We don't know where we will...
Deng has done just that. When we met six months later, it was at the new campus of Sichuan University, where he studies electrical engineering. The head of the university had asked him to give a speech commemorating the new school year. "If you're still alive, then there is no reason to despair," he told his classmates and teachers. "I am living, and my life is hopeful." Of the 36 students in his junior high school class, four died in the earthquake. "When we get together, we talk about those four," he says. "But we look to the future...