Aid trickles into isolated Qingping

With roads in and out of the quake-hit Qingping county blocked, Ma Daijin had to climb on mountain slopes with his bare hands and wade through waist-deep water.

The 38-year-old employee of a local rural credit cooperative in the city of Mianzhu finally got out safely six hours later, with the bag containing millions of yuan he had been closely guarding with his colleagues.

Qingping, with a population of more than 13,000, was completely isolated till dawn yesterday, since the quake hit Sichuan province on Monday.