Word: sichuan
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...Yang Yong, leaves early each morning to find work on reconstruction projects. "Even when he's sick he works," she says. "It will be even harder in the winter, but we have to live, so he goes." Although unemployment is as high as 80% in some areas of the Sichuan disaster zone, Yang says he doesn't have much difficultly finding work. Indeed, the extent of rebuilding still required means he can expect construction jobs for years to come. His 50-year-old father works with him, but the family worries about how long he can handle manual labor...
...Deng has done just that. When we met six months later, it was at the new campus of top-ranked Sichuan University, where he now studies electrical engineering. In July, Deng took the college-entrance exam and passed with the highest score among his schoolmates. The head of the university 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." But in private, there are moments of doubt. "To get used...
Piles of red bricks clutter the roadsides. Stacks of concrete drainage pipes fill parking lots, while stores do a brisk trade in paint and window frames. Like countless other places in China, this corner of central Sichuan province is undergoing a building boom. But this is no typical growth story. When I was here six months ago, bodies jutted from the pancaked floors of collapsed buildings and lined rubble-strewn streets. Tens of thousands of homeless crowded into sports stadiums, and millions more slept in tents. The surface of the Zipingba Reservoir was covered with a brackish film from...
...people and left 10 million homeless, rates as one of China's most astonishing endeavors. Even for a country that likes to think big, the numbers are staggering: Beijing has pledged to spend $176 billion on rebuilding over the next three years. By early July, three-quarters of the Sichuan homeless had been moved into prefabricated shelters, with all the displaced promised permanent housing by 2010. Much of the recovery effort is expressed in the vocabulary of Chinese socialism; a popular government slogan printed on giant red banners reads SWEAT TODAY FOR A BEAUTIFUL HOME TOMORROW. The exhortation echoes China...
...wake of disaster, the need to move on is natural. But in the mountains of Sichuan, the impulse to look forward is also a political decision. Too open an examination of the collapsed schools would expose deep flaws in regional governance and could unleash a flood of popular discontent. Yet even among those who are pushing ahead, the memories of the horror are unshakable. Here are four survivors' stories...