By Hu Yinan (China Dailhy)
Updated: 2008-05-19 07:30

YINGXIU, Sichuan - My sleeping bag was soaking wet when I woke up at 6 am yesterday in a rescue tent that my colleagues and I sneaked into during the heavy midnight rain and aftershocks.

A woman looks through the debris of her collapsed house on Sunday in Yingxiu, Wenchuan County, one of the worst-hit areas in last Monday's quake. [China Daily]

Four hours of sleep on the ground just meters away from a collapsed school building left me wet all over, and barely sober from some of the most gruesome nightmares.

Even when awake, I could not get my mind off the people I had earlier interviewed or saw here in Yingxiu, the survivors, the dying and the dead.

It's difficult not to think what the 1,000 residents of different towns of Wenchuan, who reached Yingxiu after some 30 hours of walking on cliffs, had gone through.

"There were corpses everywhere on our way here, people smashed by falling rocks," said Ma Lin and Bian Wenying, a couple lucky to have walked out of the disaster.

But even for them, there is no easy way out. First and foremost, they still must go to Dujiangyan, where their daughter studies. They were to celebrate her ninth birthday on May 13, but along came the quake the day before, and the family lost contact.

Hours of dangerous roads away, thousands of local residents remain stranded, including those from Ma and Bian's mountainous village of Taoguan.

Survivors such as a local primary school teacher surnamed Hu say there is enough food in the trapped villages, as about 10 percent of the crops - mainly corn - were left unharmed by the quake, but water may already be contaminated.

Rescuers have been trying all means to reach them, but to no avail. The fact that there are no suitable landing sites for helicopters in most of these villages makes timely rescue efforts especially difficult.

Individual rescue initiatives have also met difficulties. On Friday, the richest man in Xuankou, which I passed en route to Yingxiu, hired more than a dozen strong local men to walk to Wenchuan to save the wounded and trapped there. Only six returned.

Rescuers from outside the area suffered similar, albeit much less serious, losses. A few lost contact with their own group, such as a soldier from Datong, Shanxi, who escorted us to Yingxiu. He had lost contact with his regiment, and was determined to go to Wenchuan with two other soldiers upon arrival in Yingxiu on Saturday.

He was gone for more than a day, and before he called me at 6 pm yesterday, informing that he had retreated to Dujiangyan, my colleagues and I were just about to commemorate him.

This is war.

A large number of pillows and sheets were taken from the collapsed school, and doors and signboards have become mattresses.

My colleague Huang Yiming's younger brother had a brief second thought about sleeping on the pillow we picked up from a classroom, but soon gave in when the downpour began alongside the aftershocks.

Large tents were reserved for women, while men got the small, shaky ones. Those who did't have their own crowded in others' tents.

And the firemen from Jiangxi, whose tent was full, slept in body bags by the school gates, briefly frightening Huang Yiming and his brother, who couldn't sleep and took a walk outside.

All this happens in wars. But much more has also taken place. On our muddy and slippery way back, nearly 100 construction soldiers mobilized from Tibet were already in their second day of road repairs.

They all continued working despite frequent landslides, and none of them had taken a bite of food or a sip of water.

A woman surnamed Cai, who lost her parents in the quake, hurried around the ferry about 20 minutes' walk from the troops, telling each army commander and solider to send them food and water.

"Our troops have worked too hard," Cai said as she burst into tears.

"My own parents are buried down there, but it makes my heart ache all the more to see the soldiers suffer this much. They're all too young, all around my son's age."

"Please, go to my parents' place. I'll take you there. The house has collapsed, but the chicken and pigs are still alive. Tell the boys to eat them. You must eat something!"

Scenes like these have drawn me to tears a number of times over the weekend. Hopefully, it's scenes like these that will be remembered from these days of great difficulty, reminding us that solidarity makes us strong.