Special Report:Reconstruction After Earthquake
CHENGDU, Feb. 27 (Chinese media) -- Liu Renqin in his
sixties has reopened his decade-old gravy store, with the savory smell often
attracting queues of buyers from his temporary-house community.
In his view, the store is less of business purpose,
but more a link to the calm and happy life before last May's devastating
earthquake that left more than 80,000 people dead or missing.
The original store, which Liu had run for more than
ten years in Beichuan, one of the hardest-hit counties, was toppled, and half of
his families, including a son, a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter, died in
the catastrophe.
Though turning more silent, Liu has gradually been
adapted to the life in the new community, the largest prefab neighborhood in
Mianyang City, Sichuan Province. The neighborhood is home to more than 10,000
fellow residents from Beichuan.
"We have to live on," says Liu. He even plans a tour
to Beijing within a couple of years if the gravy store can help him save enough
money, since he has dreamed of visiting the national capital.
Wen Huarong, 40, who lost both her son and mother in
the quake, now works as a volunteer in the community and devotes most of her
energy taking care of the preschool children in the neighborhood.
"It touches me with a sense of family," Wen says.
"People who are still alive need some sort of dedication to life and work to
make them more courageous."
But some are still struggling for the future.
Liu Daihe, 43, finds it difficult to find a stable
job after the phosphorous mine at Qingping Town of Mianzhu, another hard-damaged
city, was gulped by the quake. He had worked for the mine for years and was the
breadwinner of his family.
He looked for jobs elsewhere, but was turned down for
his age. "I'm not competitive on the market. In addition, I don't have technical
skills. I can only do hard labor in the pit."
Liu had to travel hundreds of miles to Yibin in
southern Sichuan to work at a private mine, where he was paid 80 yuan (11.8 U.S.
dollars) a day working from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Before the Spring Festival, Liu came back and placed
himself at a small mine in the adjacent city of Shifang, which was set up by one
of his fellow villagers. The pay is 50 yuan on a daily basis.
Facing the tough situation, local governments have
listed employment as the top priority, hosting a series of job fairs and
offering training programs to help job seekers improve their technical skills.
By the end of last year, more than 1.2 million
laborers in quake-hit areas got re-employed. In Mianzhu alone, the local labor
bureau reached out to offer more than 18,000 public-welfare posts with modest
earnings, such as guarding warehouses or sweeping streets.
Jiangsu, which is responsible for the direct
assistance to Mianzhu, offered 50,000 jobs at five large-scale job fairs.
If jobs are regarded as the top priority, the second
comes housing. Ma Qianguo, chief of the Communist Party committee of Luobozhai
village in Beichuan, is so busy with house rebuilding that he has slept for only
three to four hours a day for months.
He hopes that all the villagers can move into new
houses before May 12. That will be the best way to commemorate the dead at the
quake's first anniversary, he says.
"The foundations of the new houses are as solid as
bridge piers," Ma says. "They can to stand against even a magnitude-10 quake."
"While building our new village, we are also
establishing our new life goals," he says.
In Longxi village, Wenchuan County, the quake
epicenter, 37-year-old Chen Shixue keeps his temporary house warm through the
winter with an electric heater.
Chen said the government has offered construction
materials and each family 2,000 yuan (290 U.S. dollars) to help build the wind
and rain-proof houses made of plastic cloth and wood boards.
Among the 96 families in the village, 90 lost their
homes in the quake. They built temporary houses to live through the winter as
their new permanent houses have not been completed.
As it's getting warmer, they have packed away the
quilts and the electric carpet given by the local government, says Chen.
By the end of January, 560,000 rural households in
Sichuan, almost half of the total number, had completed building their new
permanent houses.
"Spring is coming. There are always new hopes," Chen
says.
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