Sichuan Earthquake Update

Keeping love alive for a very, very long haul
By Fu Jing
Updated: 2008-05-27 07:39

Like many kids, one-year-and-half old Zhong Minhan loves yo-yo. At 2:28 pm of May 12, she was awakened from her afternoon nap, promptly got up and sat down at bed enjoying the two-minute swing with smiles.

And even now, she does not know that the yo-yo has claimed thousands of lives in many cities, towns and villages of her home province Sichuan. But she does know that she could not see her father Zhong Ying easily during the past two weeks as he has always been at the frontline handing out food, medicines and even worked as a guide for journalists.

Zhong, aged 28, is part of the influx of volunteers extending their helping hands to those parents who lost their kids and students who lost their parents to the quake, the aftershocks, landslides and floods of quake lakes.

With him as a guide, our China Daily reporting team reached several devastated towns in high mountains, sometimes by foot, walking on broken railways and twisted bridges and finally had talks with survivors escaping from their homes in the dense forests.

Zhong is not only a guide for our photographer and me. He was so warm-hearted that every time we came back from Deyang, our car would be filled with water, food, clothes gathered by him from his relatives or friends.

And he told me: “In this hard time, you journalists should not only work for your paper but give help and aid at the same time.”

I could not agree with him more.

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Guardian’s photographer Dan Chung took these photos at Niufei village, Pingwu County