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Private firms stand up out of quake debris
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-11 14:11 Chen Liangyu went back to his hometown, the flattened epicenter of Yingxiu, from which he had escaped on the third day after the May 12 earthquake, for a trip "back to the past." The 39-year-old businessman used to run a fabric shop in Yingxiu Town before the deadly quake. Through the shop, his wife and himself could earn 5,000 yuan ($714) to 6,000 yuan every month. In another business growing kiwi fruit on a 0.4-ha piece of land, once the orchid began to yield fruits, it was expected to add 40,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan to their annual income. However, the deadly earthquake, which had claimed at least 69,142 lives as of Monday, proved a u-turn in Chen's life and thrust him back into poverty. In the quake, his 12-year-old daughter was buried under the debris of her middle school. Her nine-year-old sister managed a narrow escape as she was attending physical education in the schoolyard when the tremor happened. Frequent aftershocks had compelled Chen's family to leave their hometown, with their home and shop devastated and orchard buried by the quake-triggered landslides. "I want to go back and stand up where I fell," said Chen, who had only 203 yuan left after the quake. "If there's no way out, I will find a temporary job for the time being," he added, cherishing the dream of re-opening a shop of his own. Active in quake relief With rural residents accounting for nearly 70 percent of its total population, Sichuan, which was ravaged by the quake, has registered more than 2 million private business owners who had contributed more than half of the province's GDP in 2007. Though no economic loss data is available now, Chen is far from unique among private businesses owners in Sichuan. According to Wang Guobin, head of the provincial private business association, small private businesses tended to suffer bigger losses since most of them, with difficult access to bank loans, had chosen to invest in fixed assets and not to keep much working capital and deposits. Given their own misfortune, the small private business owners, often nicknamed "petty bosses," had joined the arduous quake relief vigorously. Shuai Lan, who had operated a bakery and a hotpot restaurant in Jiangyou, lost more than 1.8 million yuan in the earthquake. But at the very afternoon when the tremor occurred, she took rice and flour out of her business to cook porridge for the survivors. At a temporary resettlement station in Jiannan Town of Deyang, 13 self-employed individuals built an improvised barbershop and gave a haircuts to more than 500 people every day. (For more biz stories, please visit Industries)
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