Rescue Stories Move China

More than 50 children and three teachers were killed under the rubble of a Huanhuan Kindergarten in Mianzhu, a city in the southwestern province of Sichuan, when a powerful earthquake rocked the province and many other parts of the country on Monday.

Rescue workers arriving at the scene on foot the day after the devastating earthquake were haunted by the sight of teacher Qu Wanrong who was found crouching on the ground under a cement slab, with a child clutched in her arms. Her skeleton and spine were crushed as she tried to sustain the concrete debris. The child she was shielding has survived.

As the rescue work proceeded, a number of touching stories began to emerge, giving hope and creating a sensation among those thrown into despair in the wake of the quake, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday.

A Chinese girl in the first grade at Xiang`e Middle School in the earthquake-hit city of Dujiangyan cried bitterly calling her friend’s name even after her body was transpired to a nearby hospital after having been found in the rubble. This is her heart breaking story.

When the earthquake started around 2:30 p.m. Monday, she rapidly ran out of the classroom. However, she returned to the classroom when she realized her friend wasn’t outside. Then with an enormous bang sound, the school building collapsed.

Coming to consciousness, the two girls found themselves holding their hands, while lying under the debris of the collapsed building. She told her friend, “We will be saved. I will be with you until rescue workers come.” She was trying to speak to her friend to wake her up whose consciousness was drifting away while being trapped under the rubble. When a relief team arrived and dug out the debris piled upon the girls, she found her friend not moving nor responding to her calling. She began to weep bitterly saying, “Only if she didn’t come back to rescue me…” She cried over the body of her friend, without letting her hand go from her friend’s hand.

Five surgeons and nurses at a hospital in Dujiangyan felt the tremor of the quake as they were about to perform a surgery. The electricity went out and people began to escape from the building. However, they didn’t lose their composure, and finally finished their surgery with an emergency light on and managed to get out of the building with the patient.

A 21-year-old man living in an apartment complex in Chengdu saved about 10 elderly people as the rows of apartment buildings dropped to the ground. He carried them on his back from the seventh floor to the ground each time.

A head of a kindergarten in Chengdu woke up children sleeping at the time the earthquake hit and saved them who otherwise would have been buried under the rubble. He had no time to think about the safety of his daughter attending a nearby elementary school. He said, “I am a parent of a child, but at the same time I am also the teacher who is in charge of taking care of the children.”

bonhong@donga.com