After they had observed three minutes of silence to pay their tribute to compatriots lost in the earthquake, the people gathered in the Tian'anmen Square in Beijing on Monday afternoon refused to disperse. Waving national flags and thrusting fists in the air, men and women, the elderly and children shouted, "Stand upright, China; Stand upright, Wenchuan!" and "Long live China!"

The spontaneous rallies took place in other cities as well.

The Chinese were roaring their defiance against the deadly blows of capricious nature; they were demonstrating their will to overpower any kind of adversity; and they were expressing their most profound love for their motherland that had suffered humiliations and aggressions in late modern times and suffered two major natural calamities over the past few months.

The Chinese people are far from being overtly expressive - and are the least aggressive - by nature. They are shy of showing their emotions in public. But whenever in adversity, they stand erect with their chins up, united as one. And especially in times of adversities, they demonstrate a strong willpower to put up with pains and a tenacity to overcome difficulties. In the past week, there were too many examples of such courage, tenacity and unity.

Since the earthquake struck Sichuan province last Monday, I have been doing nothing except reading reports from newspapers and webs or watching TV coverage, besides doing my regular work. I was moved to tears by one story after another - of people struggling to save their loved ones from collapsed buildings, of teachers sacrificing their lives to shield students from falling ceilings, of military and police forces racing against time searching for survivors under the rubble and of doctors and nurses sticking to their posts without taking a minute off even to look for their own missing family members.

The second day after the quake, I read the story of Qu Wanrong, a kindergarten teacher, who shielded a child with her back against a falling slab from the collapsed roof. She died but the child was saved. I was deeply moved and told the story to a foreign colleague of mine, who wrote a column mentioning the heroic teacher. In the following days, I read too many of such stories. In many cases, both the teachers and the shielded students died. But the teachers still merit our respect, for they flung themselves between danger and their students reacting to their instinct as a teacher.

There are also other examples of people choosing to honor their professional duties rather than taking care of their own loved ones. Yuan Shicong, an official of the Qingchuan county government, passed the debris of his home three times on his way to rescue residents in collapsed houses but did not stop to save his mother and niece who he knew were trapped under the rubble. Later the women died.

An unknown doctor and a nurse I saw in a TV footage were as idealistic as Yuan. They busied themselves attending wounded people saved from the ruins but did not make any attempt to save their own children who were trapped in the rubble a few meters away. When asked by a reporter, they said it was useless for them to watch the rescuers working on the debris. "Our post is here," they said, tears running down their cheeks.

Children were as brave as the adults. Ma Jian, a student of the Beichuan middle school, dug the debris for four hours with bare hands to save a classmate. Yin Quankui and Zhu Hualin, students of another middle school, were escaping from their collapsed school when they heard the cry of a little girl. A grandpa tossed the child about three years old onto the street before the falling walls buried him. The two students stopped to pick up the child despite the danger and brought her to safety. In the rescuing camp, they took care of the orphan like "parents" though they were children themselves.

To cite more examples may be meaningless for this column. But I couldn't help continuing to read similar stories online and save them in my files. I have become sort of "addicted to" being moved by our people's kind-heartedness and tenacity.

E-mail: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/21/2008 page10)