Picking up the pieces

The ribbon of broken homes winding up the Jian river valley in southwest China isn't featured on the picturesque billboards that once welcomed tourists and now serve as scant protection from the rain for its homeless residents.

Lush fields and wooded hills made the area a favorite getaway for affluent urbanites in recent years, and catering to their needs offered many impoverished locals a welcome escape from backbreaking agricultural work or ill-paid casual labor.

But the valley was hard hit by China's deadliest quake in decades, which struck southwestern Sichuan province on May 12 and has killed at least tens of thousands, and residents fear the tremors that took their homes has also destroyed their future.

"So many years of hard work and now I'm left with nothing," says Zhang Guangliang, tearing up as he looked at the ruined beds, chairs and televisions stacked in the courtyard of his "Country Wife's Rural Retreat" inn.

A "No vacancy" sign still dangles forlornly from the balcony of a collapsed second-story room.

"We don't have the money or the spirit to start again, but we don't want to go back to driving trucks either," adds his dejected wife Chen Jialing.

The government says, in addition to a mounting death toll, millions of people have lost their homes and livelihoods and the staggering economic loss is still not clear.

The Jian river valley was cut off after the quake destroyed a key bridge. In some areas, over half the buildings crumbled, although fatalities were fewer in single-story than in areas were people attempted to race down stairs to escape.

President Hu Jintao on May 17 visited the area, connected only by a temporary army bridge and still officially closed to journalists and visitors, to see the devastation.

Traditional country houses along the road were reduced to jumbles of giant matchsticks and newer concrete buildings crumpled into the piles of twisted steel and rubble that have become painfully familiar. In some areas bulldozers were helping residents sift through remains for cash and valuables.

Shadow of devastation

A flood of government and individual aid has been pledged for the region. But even with financial help, many of the rural innkeepers and others fear that their idyllic valley will have a long struggle to escape the shadow of the earthquake's devastation.

Images of homes reduced to rubble and desperate survivors have been plastered across Chinese television, triggering an outpouring of support.

Zhang and others in Longmenshan are very grateful for the help, but they worry that once the immediate crisis has past people may no longer want to visit an area they now know as a disaster zone, or where they fear new shocks.

As a constant reminder of the terror, at the valley's heart is the town of Longmenshan - Dragon Gate Mountain - which shares the name of a major fault line in the area.

"Everything is very ugly here, now so much has collapsed," says Bai Yuqiang standing in the center of a courtyard of once picturesque but now condemned rooms that she had only recently finished decorating.

"I worry that it is going to affect us for a long time; less customers are going to come," Bai says.

But up the valley her competitors had been cheered by the visit of old customers who were worried about their safety.

"Having the Chinese top leader come here to this small valley, now I'm sure the government will help," says Wang Dong, beside the homestay sign that was all that remained of his small hostel.

"We are going to rebuild. Earthquakes like this don't happen more than once every 70 or 80 years so I'm sure people will come back," he adds.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/26/2008 page1)