Grieving and angry parents on Thursday marked one month since China’s devastating earthquake toppled schools, demanding an explanation and apologising to their loved ones buried under the rubble.
Growing numbers of parents gathered in front of the powdery concrete and twisted steel, all that remains of the Beichuan Middle School, complaining about the quality of construction and corruption.
China has announced nationwide safety checks for schools after many collapsed in the quake while nearby government offices and apartments stayed standing.
Few families in hard-hit parts of Sichuan province escaped losses among those killed in the May 12 quake — close to 70 000 according to the latest count, with many thousands missing and likely dead. Whole towns like Beichuan, which had 30 000 residents, have been abandoned with many dead entombed in rubble.
There was a growing police presence at the Beichuan school where two parents said they were blocked from holding a memorial. About 1 300 children were killed there.
”They said this building was strong and quake-proof, but when we saw it, the concrete was like talcum powder and the steel was as thin as noodles,” said Mu Qibing, whose 17-year-old son was killed.
”None of us have seen our children yet, not even after one month.”
Other parents spoke to the rubble, apologising to their dead children and blaming themselves for failing them. One couple burnt ceremonial funeral money, incense and their child’s clothes on the rubble.
Parents of children who died at the Juyuan Middle School said that their planned memorial service at the site was being blocked by police who went from door to door warning them to stay away.
”All we want to do is remember them this day,” Zhao Deqin, a mother whose 15-year-old twin daughters, Yajia and Yaqi, died.
For other residents of this lush region of rice paddies and bamboo thickets, the one-month date began as just another day in what will be a long struggle to cope with sweltering, crowded tent camps and worries over jobs and education.
Public support
The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s response to the quake, with a sweeping relief operation and storm of patriotic propaganda, has so far won widespread public support. But as the quake region enters a vast rebuilding phase, the government is sure to be tested by victims’ impatience for new lives.
The half-built sports complex at Mianzhu city has become home for thousands of people displaced by the quake, a teeming display of the torrent of aid and sympathy that the government has mustered to help victims.
Residents live in hundreds of blue tents regimented into their home towns, lining up for food, clothes and whatever arrives on aid trucks. Soon, many will move into thousands of pre-fabricated foam-panel huts rising next to the tents.
”The biggest worry that I hear is living in the tents and prefabs for so long,” said Xu Shibin, a doctor gruffly dispensing medicine in the hospital in the Mianzhu complex’s roofed outdoor tennis court.
”But all I can tell them is to try to keep patient until they have their own homes again. That could be three years for some.”
In this poor farm country, where education is prized as an escape to prosperity, displaced parents also said they worried about the disruption to children’s schooling.
”We haven’t heard anything about school yet. How’s my boy going to keep up?” said Zhang Zhenxin, a displaced farmer living in a tent at Hongtai Village, downstream from Beichuan.
”This will be tolerable for a few months,” he said as he stirred a pot of rice porridge over a campfire. ”But the longer we stay here, the harder it will be to get back to normal.”
Confinement to quake camps has also cut many people off from farms, jobs and business. For many, day-to-day hardships have, for now, overshadowed mourning. But that grief remains pervasive.
Notice boards around tent camps list missing kin and the families hoping to find them. Locals sneak back into their abandoned hometowns and villages to hunt for relatives.
”We haven’t heard anything from our boys since the earthquake. All we can do is hope they got out,” said Zhang Zhenxiu, a woman in her late 50s, as she hoed a cornfield at Taihong Village, downstream from Beichuan, where her two missing sons worked.
”No. They’re gone. We know that,” said her husband, Han Dajun, whose brother also died in the quake. ”It’s hard to get used to, because they weren’t ever around much. But I know we won’t see them again.” — Reuters