(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-22 00:43

Zhang Youlu and other donators takes a photo after they finished a love campaign for the orphans of quake-hit Sichuan in Tangshan City of north China's Hebei Province May 20, 2008. [Newsts.com]

TANGSHAN  -- Zhang Youlu was nine years old when his parents died in the devastating earthquake in Tangshan, in north China's Hebei Province, in 1976.

Zhang grew up in a government-run boarding school for quake orphans in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang. He now runs a bookstore in his home city of Tangshan, about 200 kilometers east of Beijing.

His childhood woes came back to him when an 8.0-magnitude quake struck Wenchuan county in the southwestern Sichuan Province last Monday, killing more than 40,000 people.

"My heart ached when I saw those children who lost both parents in the quake: babies who survived under the protection of dead parents and older children who find it hard to believe their parents are dead," said Zhang.

Two days after the quake, he put a posting on an Internet forum calling on all Tangshan orphans to extend love and care to quake victims in Sichuan.

Hundreds of people have answered his call in the past week with cash donations, offers of foster care for orphans and counseling services at the hardest-hit areas.

"As quake orphans ourselves, we feel those children's pain better than anyone else," he said.

PASSING ON LOVE

Thirty-two years after the devastating quake that killed 240,000 people, the desire to repay society for the love and support that helped more than 4,200 orphans grow up brought them together again.

More than 300 Tangshan orphans rallied in front of the downtown monument commemorating the 1976 quake on Tuesday to mourn the dead and donate cash for the quake-hit areas, though nearly all of them had donated more than once.

Hundreds more responded to their call and made donations from other Chinese cities.

Quake orphan Zhang Xiangqing, now president of a steel company in Tianjin, has donated 100 million yuan (14 million US dollars). "I hope the money will help build new homes and schools that will withstand earthquakes."

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