An understanding heart counts

TANGSHAN: Zhang Youlu was 9 years old when his parents died in the earthquake that devastated his hometown of Tangshan, Hebei province, in 1976.

Zhang grew up in a government-run boarding school for quake orphans in the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang. Today, he runs a bookstore in Tangshan, about 200 km east of Beijing.

The 8.0-magnitude quake that devastated Wenchuan county, Sichuan province, and killed more than 65,000 people caused Zhang's woeful childhood memories to resurface.