A teenage girl has told how she and her classmates sang pop songs together as they lay trapped and injured in the ruins of their high school after the massive earthquake in southwest China on Monday.
Li Anning, 16, was among 360 children pulled alive from the debris of the Beichuan No.1 Middle School, in Beichuan County, Sichuan Province, by noon on Thursday. More than 700 students are still feared buried.
Li was trapped for 40 hours in the rubble of the collapsed six-storey school building before People's Liberation Army soldiers rescued her.
The senior high first grader at Beichuan No.1 Middle School told the Beijing News newspaper how her class was in the middle of a geography lesson when the tremors began.
"Our classroom on the fourth floor began to shake suddenly and within no time, the fifth, the fourth and third floors all collapsed together," said Li.
Through the dim light, Li saw the white shirt of a boy classmate, Li Yuanfeng, who was lying nearby.
"I grabbed one of Yuanfeng's hands, calling out to him, but he didn't respond. In the beginning, I could feel the warmth of his hand, but soon it cooled," said Li.
Li was unable to move and began calling out the names of her classmates one by one. Three girls who had been friends with Li lay not far away, but she could not reach them.
After about 10 hours trapped in the debris, other teenagers started to shout out and then began talking to each other.
"We have to keep going so we can get through this," one teenager said.
Li said she could not remember who started, but the trapped students later began to sing pop songs, waiting patiently for rescuers to help them.
"One line from Michael Wong's 'Fairytale' song, which goes 'Let's write our ending together' gave us strength and confidence, " she said.
Li recalled screaming with the tremendous pain of being pulled from the ruins on Wednesday and carried by stretcher to safety.
She is being treated at the Mianyang City Central Hospital.
Beichuan No.1 Middle School in Mianyang City was about 160 kilometers northeast of the epicenter in Wenchuan County.
The main building of the school collapsed when the quake hit at about 2:30 p.m., burying 1,000 students and teachers. Yi Jie, director of the earthquake control and relief headquarters in Beichuan, said about 700 student are still believed to be buried.
The headquarters would not give the figure for the number of bodies so far recovered, but Yi said they had beefed up rescue work.
A fire fighter from Yuzhong District, in neighboring Chongqing Municipality, said his detachment alone had rescued three survivors on Thursday morning.
A man named Li Qi had been on the campus for three straight days. His son, a student, was believed to be among the buried.
"I could hear children's voices from under the debris and I shouted to them 'Hold on! Help has arrived!'" Li Qi said.
Rescuers from Chongqing, Shaanxi and Shenyang joined the rescue operation on Wednesday.
About 80 percent of the buildings in the old town area collapsed and almost 60 percent were leveled in the new town area of the mountainous county, about 160 kilometers northeast of the epicenter Wenchuan.
The death toll in Beichuan was estimated at up to 5,000, with 10,000 injured, according to the latest information of the headquarters.
Beichuan, in the southwestern Sichuan Province, was one of the areas hardest hit by the 7.8-magnitude quake, China's worst in three decades.
(Xinhua News Agency May 15, 2008)