'It was like an air force bombing a village'

For Zhang Maotang, May 12, 2008, was the day his personal apocalypse began. For almost nine weeks it seemed to him that day after day a relative of his would die, and it plunged him into what he says was madness.

His daughter and her husband were killed by rocks, and a cousin and two nephews died before his eyes.

"It was like an air force bombing a village," he says. "Houses had collapsed and there was rubble everywhere. I looked after my nephew for an hour before he finally died."