Lijiang working hard to ease pain of Sichuan orphans

My first personal contact with children orphaned by the earthquake came on Tuesday, during the torch relay in Lijiang, Yunnan province.

There were 42 of them, from Shifang, the city closest to the epicenter in Wenchuan, and they had moved to Lijiang on May 20 to be cared for and schooled. As the latest additions to the Lijiang population, they were invited to recite a poem, along with other schoolchildren, at the relay's closing ceremony.

When they were on stage, it was tempting to believe the horrible memory of the quake had left them and that they had embraced their new lives.

But off stage, I could see that was not so.

As I approached the stage, the local kids flocked around me like chirping birds, checking out my press card and my camera. All but a few of the youngsters from Sichuan did nothing but sit quietly in front of the stage.

I went to them hoping to strike up a conversation, and sat down beside a young girl, who later revealed her name, Jiang Xin, by writing it on my notepad.

The 9-year-old was clearly very shy: As I spoke to her, she kept her head bowed and gave me little more than "yes" and "no" answers.

I was considering asking her about the earthquake, but decided instead to ask her where she came from, even though I knew the answer.

But I regretted asking even that, as when I did, the girl buried her head even deeper into her chest and whispered, "Lijiang". For a moment, I did not know what to say and was relieved when another of the orphans, Wu Kunzhi, came to speak to me. Sporting a pair of blue-framed glasses, which the 9-year-old boy told me was a gift from a volunteer from Beijing.

Despite my earlier regret, I asked Wu where he came from, and he told me Shifang.

I then realized it would be selfish of me to keep asking children about the earthquake that claimed the lives of their parents. So instead we chatted about trivial things, such as who had the better spectacles: Wu insisted he did.

Early in the day I had spoken to He Liqin, the mother of a 12-year-old boy from Lijiang who carried the torch for the first leg of the relay in the city. Tears welled in her eyes, as the 35-year-old woman from the Naxi ethnic group, told me her memories of the quake that hit Lijiang in 1996.

"I saw many people buried under rubble, but I was heavily pregnant and couldn't do anything to help," she said.

Twelve years on, the images remain in her mind, she said.

But she said she was luckier than the Sichuan orphans.

"I still have my family."

Zhang Guimei, a middle school teacher and director of the Children's Home in Lijinag, which cares for 50 orphans, said: "No one wants to admit to being an orphan.

"We provide them with not only a home, but also constant care and love," Zhang, who carried the Olympic torch on Monday, during the Kunming leg, said.

"We used to think the torch was so far way and unreachable. But when it was confirmed I was to be a torchbearer, the children were so happy, I can't begin to tell you.

"To them, it was a clear message they had not been forgotten."

(China Daily 06/12/2008 page6)