Tales from the quake: heroism, compassion

By Huang Zhiling and Wang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-02 07:49

"Five operations were being performed or to be performed at that time. None of the medical staff left until after the operations and Wei was the last," he told China Daily.

Zheng Xingfu, 24, is a doctor in the clinic of the State-owned Chuanjian Pipe Co Ltd in Yuantong town in Chongzhou, a city under Chengdu's administration, who was working in the clinic when the quake hit.

After he was sure no one in the company was injured, he went to his home city of Pengzhou the next day when the company gave employees several days off to visit their families.

Finding his parents unscathed, Zheng donated blood in a downtown square in Pengzhou where he also worked as a volunteer for two days. Even after he heard the road leading to Wenchuan county, the epicenter, was blocked Zheng departed for Yingxiu town that was reported to have many injured.

With a box of medicine, Zheng rode a motorcycle carrying food and 12 bottles of mineral water to Dujiangyan.

That night, in the mountains

Braving falling rocks, he trodded through Yunhua Mountains from Longchi town on foot, reaching Huangjia village in Yingxiu nearly nine hours later at night of May 16.

"On the way to Yingxiu, refugees fleeing the town told me not to go there because it was dangerous. But I persisted although I was sometimes terrified. I could not see in the darkness and had to walk alone for several hours," he said.

Zheng was the first doctor to reach the mountainous village where he treated more than 10 injured villagers before he left as day broke.

He next arrived in a refuge camp named Madi where he met a 60-year-old man.

Because one of his insteps was smashed by debris from the quake, one toe was rotting. His life would be endangered if it was not cut off in time.

As there was no scalpel, refugees gave Zheng a kitchen knife. "As a graduate of the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I like orthopedics and surgery," he told China Daily.

Grinding the knife on a stone, grilling it on a fire and spraying it with ethanol, Zheng cut off the toe and cleared away dead tissue.

When he later met army doctors in the town, they felt Zheng's arrival was unbelievable because they themselves had come by boat from Dujiangyan.

Together with the army doctors, Zheng treated nearly 300 injured people on May 16 and 17. Because he had nothing to eat for two days - the road was blocked and food could not be transported to the town - he had to leave Yingxiu for Dujiangyan on the evening of May 17 and went home.

Zheng, who looks gentle, has been hailed on the Internet as "the coolest doctor".

Kindergarten teachers

Zhou Rulan, 34, is a teacher at Pengzhou Hongyan primary school. When the quake hit she was serving as a temporary teacher for 52 kindergarten children. She could have easily fled if she had wanted.

The children were so young many of them did not know how to escape, so Zhou entered the shaking building four times to take all of them out to the playground.

Although it happened nearly three months ago, Li Yuanxiu, the 45-year-old headmistress of the prestigious Chengdu No. 4 Kindergarten, which has a history of 67 years, remembers every detail of the afternoon of May 12.

Li was presiding over a meeting in the conference hall on the fourth floor of the kindergarten's administrative building when she felt the chair on which she sat was violently shaken.

As she experienced two 7.2-magnitude earthquakes in Songpan, Sichuan, in August 1976, Li knew it was a strong earthquake.

"Seventy-six of the kindergarten's 79 teachers who were attending the meeting rushed out of the building in less than one minute and went to the third floor of another building that had 300 children around 3 years old in a nursery," Li recalled.

When the teachers reached the nursery, attendants who did not attend the meeting had taken older children to safety. Xiao Ping, a 43-year-old assistant in class 4, grade one, alone took 35 children from the second floor to a clearing.

"The children were too young to know what happened and did not run. After the teachers came, each woman teacher carried two children while each male carried four. A few teachers even used sheets to hold more children and ran to the playground in front of the building," Li said.

In minutes, all the children in the nursery were taken to safety. Li gave a sigh of relief and burst into tears when all the 648 children in the kindergarten were safe.

"The three minutes were the most heart-stopping in my 13 years of work in the kindergarten, for each child is priceless to a family. And the courage of the teachers has greatly touched me," Li told China Daily.

Four pregnant teachers also helped in the evacuation. To Li's delight, all of them are physically sound today.

Gao Qiang, a young self-employed man in Dujiangyan, a city under Chengdu's administration, was operating a crane at a construction site near Mount Qingcheng, birthplace of Chinese Taoism, at the time of the earthquake.

As communications were cut, Gao worried about his eight-year-old son in the city's Xinjian primary school, so he stopped working and drove the crane to downtown Dujiangyan where the school is located.

As he was approaching downtown Dujiangyan, he learned some 900 students were buried in the rubble of a collapsed building at Juyuan High School. Gao's crane was the first on the scene, where he worked to remove collapsed slabs until early the next day.

When he went to his son's school, he found that the boy was dead. His crane might have been useful in removing the debris burying his son if he had gone to Xinjian Primary School first.

Chen Yan, a 36-year-old Chengdu citizen, is a sales manager in a company in the city. A former armed policeman in Tibet autonomous region, Chen went alone to Lijiang in neighboring Yunnan province to participate in quake relief when a magnitude 7 quake jolted the ancient town in February 1996. When a rare flood hit central China in 1998, Chen and other rescue staff steered a boat to save stranded flood victims.

When the quake took place, Chen was one of the first volunteers to enter Dujiangyan and the first volunteer to enter hard-hit Hanwang town in Mianzhu.

On the evening of May 12, Chen drove his car to take dozens of quake victims from Dujiangyan to their relatives and friends in Chengdu. From late May 13 to the morning of May 17, Chen worked either alone or with the National Earthquake Disaster Relief Team in the rubble of Dongqi High School in Hanwang to save more than 20 children. For 80 hours during his stay at the school, he slept only five hours.

Chen's relief experience and wisdom was acclaimed by members of the National Earthquake Disaster Relief Team. "He is a daredevil who always went to any dangerous spot before our members," said a team member.

Asked why he came to the rescue, he replied "because I am alive".

British tourists

Peng Bo, 25, is a guide with the Sichuan China Travel Service in Chendu.

Before lunch on May 12, Peng had shown 31 British tourists around the Wolong Nature Reserve to see giant pandas. After lunch, they left for Chengdu and the earthquake hit.

Trees fell, a huge crack appeared on the road and rocks from the mountains pummeled the tour bus. Peng was the nearest to the door and could have escaped if he had wanted.

But he calmed down the tourists including an 84-year-old woman. Together they walked for six hours along a damaged road 10 km away from Dujiangyan to reach the Qingcheng Bridge near Mount Qingcheng in Dujiangyan. Three hours later, he found a bus with the help of local police which took all the 31 tourists to Chengdu unscathed.

While looking for a taxi for Dujiangyan, Liu Shizhao found Shi Xingdao, a 52-year-old nun from the Zhongxing Temple in Pixian, a suburban county of Chengdu, lining up for her turn to donate blood to quake victims.

"I will donate whatever I have to quake zones," she told Liu.

On the evening of May 12, long lines of people braving rain to wait their turn to donate blood were seen at every blood station in Chengdu.

Many of the events and personal stories have been reported in the media since the quake, convincing visitors to the city that Chengdu people know how to enjoy life in times of peace and show their responsibility in times of a disaster, said a commentary in the Chengdu Economic Daily.

Like water, the character of Chengdu people is gentle but powerful, it said.

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