Home helped rebuild lives

Hundreds of children orphaned in devastating quake have found meaning again

After spotting each other across a crowded dining room on Sunday, Cao Weiping and Li Hong fell into an emotional embrace.

"Mom," Li said, with tears in her eyes, before placing bags of fruit she had brought as gifts into Cao's hands. She had come to introduce her boyfriend, she said, "because I want mom to see how happy I am".

Cao is not her biological mother. She is the woman who helped Li pick up the pieces after her life was torn apart by the Wenchuan earthquake 10 years ago.

Li was just 12 when the magnitude 8 quake devastated Wenchuan county, Sichuan province, on May 12, 2008. Her home was destroyed and her father, who had been raising her alone, was among the more than 87,000 people dead or missing.

With nowhere to go, Li, along with hundreds of other young people, was sent to live at the Ankang Home, a project started by the China Children and Teenagers' Fund and Rizhao Steel Group to help those orphaned in the disaster.

Initially, the home was in Rizhao－a city in Shandong province 1,500 kilometers from Wenchuan－and occupied several dormitories previously used by steelworkers.

After about a year, the home was relocated to a complex built for that purpose in Chengdu, Sichuan's capital.

Li stayed at Ankang until 2013, when she enrolled at a vocational college. She has kept in regular contact with her "mom", Cao, who was among 86 caregivers employed to run the facility in 2009. The 22-year-old returned to the home on Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Wenchuan quake.

"No matter how far I go or how long I am away, Ankang will always be my home," she said. "It made me secure and independent, and it taught me how to love again after suffering so much in the disaster."