(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-20 07:36

On Sunday afternoon, a M1-71 helicopter chartered from China Eastern Airlines landed at Guanghan airport. Out stepped Du Juan, a 40-year-old nurse, who helped emergency workers to move the injured into emergency vehicles.

Du works at a rural clinic at Yuli, a small town in Beichuan where many locals are ethnic Qiang. The quake isolated the place from the outside world for six days. Finally, on Sunday, helicopters were able to transfer the gravely injured, and Du accompanied them on the flight.

After they arrived in Guanghan and all the patients were unloaded, she asked a flight assistant for his cellphone and made a call to her brother in Mianyang, who did not know whether she was alive or dead. Her hands trembled and her voice quivered. She could no longer hold herself when the call went through. Droned by the aircraft propeller, her howl could be heard by all on the scene.

"I have to go back and find him. I have to find his corpse," she cried.

Du was talking about her husband, a postal worker in Beichuan, who was buried in the rubble.

The helicopter's crew handed her a can of congee and she gulped it down. Grief and commitment to her work as a nurse have prevented her from sitting down and enjoying a proper meal.

Earlier, the crew had thought this woman was a bit harsh. When the plane first landed in Yuli, a PLA soldier delivered a 10-year-old boy to a crew member. But Du Juan pulled him back, saying, "there are more seriously wounded people down here", and pointing to a row of patients on makeshift stretchers.

The crew had to budge and let the 17 severely wounded patients board first. After counting everyone onboard, Du looked outside the window and said to a crew member: "My husband is buried there. Let me take another look."

Du was returning to Beichuan. "I'm taking a two-day break. I'll carry back some medicine with me." She had searched everywhere in downtown Beichuan, but she would look elsewhere and would not give up until she found her husband, dead or alive.

China Daily

(China Daily 05/20/2008 page13)