By Liu Jun (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-20 11:37

As rain continued down pouring, the students were terrified by the aftershocks.

The teachers stood in a circle around the children, shielding them from the rain.

"We kept telling them: 'Your teachers are here, don't be afraid. You can lean on each other to get some sleep'," headmaster Wang Jingping told Chengdu Daily.

The teachers had to stay awake all night in the freezing cold, making sure the canvas wasn't blown away by the strong winds.

"We couldn't lower our hands for one minute," Wang said. When the rain finally eased at dawn, the teachers' arms were swollen and numb.

As soon as about 20 armed police found a way to access the mountain, the teachers decided to send the students to a safer place, with one child between two adults.

"The rain was very heavy. We could see landslides everywhere. Rocks kept falling from above us. It was horrifying," recalled Zeng Shumei, a 12-year-old fifth-grader.

"The road was less than 1 chi (33 cm) wide at the narrowest place and the cliff was right below us," said another pupil, Chen Kefeng.

"They sheltered us with their bodies and inched forward. If someone fell, it could only be the teachers and armed police."

It took the students three hours to plough through 10 km of mountainous paths to a hotel in Wenjingjiang town, from where they were sent to Chongzhou city by the local education bureau.

"When the teachers took off their shoes, blood had soaked through the socks. They couldn't take off the socks," Wang said.

One foreign teacher's cool head saved 29 students at the Guangya IB School in Dujiangyan.

As soon as the quake started, the Australian teacher, known as Dane, shouted "desk, desk" to his students, making sure that all students were beneath their desks. As he finally took cover himself, the ceiling broke and fell.

As soon as the trembling stopped, he led the students downstairs. Dane spent the night with his students on the football field before heading for Chengdu.

With additional reports by Xinhua and other Chinese media

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