Tragedy inspires solidarity

Just weeks before China was set to host the 2008 Olympic Games, disaster struck. On May 12, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale hit Sichuan.

The quake wreaked widespread havoc. More than 48,000 villages were affected across an area of 500,000 sq km. The tremblor claimed almost 70,000 lives, 5 million people lost their homes, and millions were injured.

Wenchuan county, the epicenter of the quake, suffered the worst devastation as roughly one-fifth of its 100,000 population were killed or went missing.