Rising from rubble to discover the world

I met Xue Chen in the debris from which he went on to build his dream.

He was 17 and living and studying in prefabricated structures erected among the rubble of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.

I'd come to his high school in Sichuan province's Pingwu county as a volunteer and journalist about half a year after seismic violence left more than 80,000 dead or missing in the region. Pingwu was among the most devastated communities.