Sitting in the Hongyan restaurant, its vast three-storey marble facade rising above a busy street, Liu Shunyou stubbed out his cigarette.”I only started smoking to block out the smell of dead bodies all around the town,” he explained.
As Sichuan’s devastated quake zone turns its attention to rebuilding, it should look north-east for inspiration. Thirty-two years ago an earthquake obliterated Tangshan, flattening its buildings and killing almost one in four of its one million inhabitants. Now the ”phoenix city” is larger and more prosperous than ever. Its population is several times the pre-quake level; its haze testifies to the strength of local industry; its GDP is ranked 20th among China’s cities. Yet the fast cars gliding along the streets reflect insecurity as well as wealth, say locals: people indulge themselves instead of saving for a tomorrow which may never arrive.
Traces of the 1976 disaster remain at only a handful of sites. But the survivors remember everything. The desperate search for parents and children; the moans of the dying; the stench of the dead. A generation later, earthquake rumours could still paralyse the city. Even now, pupils undergo quake drills. And when Sichuan suffered, residents like Liu were among the first in China to donate money.
The factory administrator was 17 when his house collapsed as the quake struck overnight. ”Even when I got out of the wreckage at daybreak, I didn’t know it was an earthquake. I thought it was war,” he recalled. ”The whole city was wiped out. No building remained — there was nothing I could recognise. People were crying and shouting for help. It was very, very frightening.”
Liu admitted he wanted to escape. But like the rest of the residents, he had nowhere to go. ”Anyway, Chinese people like to live in the same places,” he said. ”Tangshan people had a strong instinct to survive. People wanted to live.”
The city was one of China’s major industrial bases, and officials ensured that production soon resumed. The power station and mine were operating within the week. But life for their workers was precarious. In the months after the July disaster, food drops decayed in the summer heat before they could be eaten. In the winter, only the area’s coal kept survivors from freezing in their makeshift shelters.
And while Sichuan’s suffering was played out on screens around the world, Tangshan’s remained largely secret. The death toll was classified information for three years; foreign journalists were excluded for seven.
”The country was very poor, so the rebuilding took a very, very long time,” said Qian Gang, author of The Great China Earthquake. ”They were still living in earthquake-safe tents after the Cultural Revolution, in 1980. Then in 1983, 1984, when it was coming up to the 10-year anniversary, they started to rebuild the infrastructure seriously.”
But locals appreciated the limited assistance they were given. ”We used to say ‘China has two kuai [yuan] and the government has earmarked one for Tangshan’,” said a former mine worker, who declined to give his name. ”We were blessed with oil reserves and a deep-water port. The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] provided support and other provinces sent food.”
By the time China’s economy began to boom, Tangshan was ready to take full advantage. Now, as then, military might will be key to the recovery effort. But Sichuan’s future appears far brighter than Tangshan’s did in 1976.
Beijing has established a 70-billion yuan ($8,7-billion) rebuilding fund, promising to top it up in coming years, and has pledged to construct 1,5-million temporary homes. Su Youpo, who helped guide the rebuilding of Tangshan, told Reuters that the new cities could be completed within a year.
Its real disadvantage is its topography. Tangshan lies on a flat plain; in Sichuan, the worst-hit areas are in the province’s mountains. Mudslides have erased roads and villages and created new lakes. Officials say Beichuan’s county seat will be built in a different location. But the challenges remain considerable: creating not just homes, schools and hospitals but even roads and bridges.
”China is well-equipped to organise things … But you cannot do it without communities,” said Tony Lloyd-Jones, an expert in post-disaster reconstruction at the University of Westminster. ”There’s no point building things people won’t feel comfortable with. In the end, it’s the people who make it work.”
It sounds strikingly like the words you hear again and again in Tangshan: gratitude for outside assistance, but a belief that a society must rebuild itself.
”As an orphan, even though people helped, I learned to be independent,” said Wang Shaowen, who was eight when the earthquake hit. ”I want to tell those Wenchuan orphans to be strong. You have to rely on yourselves.”
Wang’s parents and sister are among the tens of thousands buried in what has become Nanhu Park. By one gate, a stretch of black marble commemorates the dead. But most people come here to relax, not remember. Couples hire pedalos and families picnic along the lake’s shore. The earthquake has scarred Tangshan, but it no longer defines it.
Additional research by Alice Xin Liu and Huang Rui – guardian.co.uk Â