Independent spirit a ray of hope

Reporter's Log | Hu Yongqi

April 20 was my deadline for finishing all the interviews for the fifth anniversary of the destructive Wenchuan earthquake that left more than 90,000 dead or missing in Sichuan province in 2008.

That morning, a magnitude-7 tremor struck Sichuan's Ya'an city, hitting Lushan and Baoxing counties especially hard. I had felt the strong tremors in the bathroom of a hotel in Dujiangyan and called China Daily's headquarters in Beijing immediately. But the lines were already down.