Quake survivor Strong Pig, now plasticized, greets Sichuan museum visitors

Visitors to the Jianchuan Museum in Dayi county, Sichuan province, on Thursday had a pleasant surprise. They were able to see the legendary Zhu Jianqiang, also known as Strong Pig, which survived the Wenchuan county earthquake on May 12, 2008.

The animal died in June at the age of 14－elderly for a pig－and was preserved by plastination. The process was undertaken using technology from the Mystery of Life Museum in Dalian, Liaoning province.

Strong Pig was put on display for the 14th anniversary of the quake, a museum official said. She survived on charcoal and rainwater for 36 days after the disaster and became a national symbol of hope.

Adopted by the museum after the quake, she greeted visitors who wanted to catch a glimpse of the four-legged survivor of the biggest earthquake since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Ten provinces, including Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi and Yunnan, were affected.

The magnitude 8.0 quake, which was triggered at 2:28 pm on May 12, 2008, killed 69,226 people and left 17,923 missing.

To mark the 14th anniversary of the tragedy, the Chengdu Center of Earthquake Early Warning Technology Research of China Earthquake Administration, the Institute of Care-Life in Chengdu and the Emergency Management Bureau of the Chengdu High-Tech Zone launched China's first cross-provincial and cross-industry synchronous earthquake early warning exercise at 2:28 pm on May 11. Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi and Yunnan participated, working with schools, communities, office areas and a chemical plant.

The exercise simulated a quake in Wenchuan and its effects on Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, and Yunnan, Gansu and Shaanxi, demonstrating that it was possible for people to get to safety up to 164 seconds before seismic waves arrived, said Wang Tun, head of the Institute of Care-Life.

In many parts of the country, a real-time early warning system already runs on TV sets and mobile phones, which people can make use of in case of an earthquake, he said.

The system sends warnings seconds after a quake is detected and can help save lives because the warnings are transmitted via radio waves, which are able to travel far faster than seismic waves. By way of reference, radio waves travel at 300,000 kilometers per second, while seismic shock waves travel at only 3 to 6 km per second.

Chen Huizhong, a senior research fellow with the China Earthquake Administration's Institute of Geophysics, said this means people nearby have a chance to escape before they even feel the quake.