By Hu Yinan and Zhang Haizhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-09 08:51

Tents are for the most part ready, but not electricity. Neither is there a site for showers, at least in the Baosheng resettlement area, where volunteers managed to build five temporary toilets to complement the three existing ones.

And yet, these are by no means enough for this community, which had as many as 4,000 people in the first days of evacuation.

A woman holds a baby in a tent in Mianyang. Resients are becoming anxious becuase of slow progress in draining the quake lake. [China Daily]

A great number of people have already left in response to local officials' calls and a new preferential policy that said those who left the tents for friends and acquaintances in other places would get another 10 yuan per day in subsidies, in addition to the same amount of financial assistance from the central government.

But those who have stayed continue fear for their lives in the mounting heat, amid unconfirmed rumors of the coming flood from the quake lake.

School-age children are left with no classes and only a weekly assignment to finish, while adults and seniors have essentially nothing to do.

People with chickens, pigs and vegetables around their collapsed homes, such as residents belonging to Group 6 of Dengta village, could still go back and do some buying and selling during the day.

"It's fine so long as they promise to be responsible for whatever may happen and come back before 7 pm," said Liao Tiangui, self-rescue team chief of Group 6.

However, residents of Liu's Group 14, a batch of 200 farmers living on rice, corn and vegetables, haven't been as lucky.

Quake-induced landslides destroyed Longxiyan, a 7.5-km irrigation canal for fields, devastating their livelihoods.

Even those whose crops and fields remain unharmed by the disaster are not permitted to return, because the fields by and large lie in an area that would be affected if the Tangjiashan quake lake's banks burst.

Here, as in other parts of Mianyang, a city of 5.2 million residents, people are desperate to get their lives back to normal, but the chances of the Tangjiashan dam bursting have dampened people's spirits.

"We hope the quake lake can be drained immediately, so we can resume planting and rebuild our houses soon," Li Jiqin said.

"We also hope the government can give us a detailed rebuilding plan, so we can have a rough idea of what to do next," he added quietly.

"Please, ask the government to get rid of this time bomb," Zhang Jianbi, said outside her tent.

"The sooner the water is gone, the sooner we can go back to where we were," murmured another.

Although their homes may be gone, these farmers still want to return to the place where they grew up and raised their families.

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