Show of support draws $215m

Zhang Xufu could not believe his eyes when he saw his daughter on TV on the night of May 18. During a fundraising event hosted by CCTV, his daughter Bai Lin was recalling her experiences during the earthquake, which destroyed her school in Beichuan county.

"In a flash, the five-story school became a 2-m-tall hill of rubble, from which we saw hands and legs covered with blood poking out ... " Bai could not finish her testimony; she was too overcome with sorrow.

Her 42-year-old father, who had escaped from the ruins of a building in Xina village, Mianyang city, hadn't heard any news of his daughter for nearly a week.

He had walked for two straight days to Beichuan, where his daughter was attending boarding school, only to find the building had been utterly destroyed. From there, he went on to survey all local hospitals and temporary shelters for survivors - he even searched among the corpses - but to no avail. His daughter seemed to have utterly disappeared.

"Her school was destroyed, and I thought I had lost my child," he told Beijing News.

He had to return to Mianyang where he stayed at his relative's place and saw the TV show.

With the help of local police, he got through on the TV station's hotline. The live show then became the stage for a touching moment, in which Bai and her father were reunited over the telephone. They began talking in the Sichuan dialect until Bai was overcome with tears, and all she could do was weep as she listened to her father's soothing words.

She eventually told her father: "Papa, now that you are OK, you must help others!"

Zhang later recalled that moment, saying: "I didn't know what to say, beside letting her know I was alive, and I couldn't continue."

It was perhaps the only moment during the show when those in the audience smiled. But it was only one among many of the event's moving moments.

When Jiang Min, a policewoman from Beichuan county, walked onstage, the audience applauded for half a minute. Jiang had lost 10 family members in the quake but coped with her loss by rescuing others in Pengzhou city, where she now works, until she fainted from exhaustion.

She vividly remembers her 2-year-old daughter's last words: "I miss you mama. When will you come back to see me?"

The earthquake hit four hours later. Both her hometown of Beichuan and the city in which she worked, Pengzhou, were devastated. Jiang and her colleagues immediately devoted themselves to rescue work.

She tried calling home but could not get through. It was only 16 hours later that she received a call from her uncle, who told her 10 family members, including her daughter, mother and grandmother, had lost their lives.

Although devastated by the news, Jiang did not leave the frontlines of the rescue work. Her husband walked all the way to Beichuan alone and later returned in sorrow and desperation.

"I had hoped he would bring back something for me, but he had nothing," Jiang said in a quavering voice during the TV event. "They are buried more than 10 meters deep, so it's impossible to find them - impossible. I want to say to my mother: 'Sorry Mom; I didn't come back to you at that moment'."

Outstanding courage and commitment were also shown by the 15 paratroopers who landed in Maoxian county, Sichuan province, two days after the quake. They all wrote their last words before making the perilous 5,000-m leap, complicated by dangerous land formations, a lack of guidance from the ground as well of landmarks or meteorological data.

It was the first time in the modern history of the People's Liberation Army that its paratroopers joined disaster relief work. The CCTV show played footage of the soldiers preparing for the jump, stirring applause and tears from audience members.

Former CCTV anchor Li Jiaming is a Sichuan native. He was studying in the United States when the quake devastated the province but boarded the first China-bound plane he could after hearing the news. However, his mother refused to let him return to his hometown.

"My mother said the rice or water I would consume could have saved a life, so she would not allow me to go back," Li said on the show.

After the quake, Li's mother stayed at home all day every day, making batch after batch of steamed buns for the soldiers. Using the TV show's broadcast, Li pleaded with his mother to move to a safer place.

Zhang Qingxiang, chairman of Tianjin Rockcheck Steel Group Co Ltd and a survivor of the Tangshan earthquake, which killed about 240,000 in 1976, donated 30 million yuan ($4.3 million). But on the live show he decided to give an additional 70 million yuan ($10 million).

"Most of our staff are from Tangshan," he said. "We experienced the quake in 1976, so it is our obligation to help the people of Sichuan."

Within four hours, the show generated more than 1.5 billion yuan ($215 million) for relief efforts.

(China Daily 05/20/2008 page16)