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Zhang Xufu could not believe his eyes when he saw his daughter on
TV on the night of May 18. During a fundraising event hosted by CCTV, his
daughter Bai Lin was recalling her experiences during the earthquake, which
destroyed her school in Beichuan county.
"In a flash, the five-story
school became a 2-m-tall hill of rubble, from which we saw hands and legs
covered with blood poking out ... " Bai could not finish her testimony; she was
too overcome with sorrow.
Her 42-year-old father, who had escaped from
the ruins of a building in Xina village, Mianyang city, hadn't heard any news of
his daughter for nearly a week.
He had walked for two straight days to
Beichuan, where his daughter was attending boarding school, only to find the
building had been utterly destroyed. From there, he went on to survey all local
hospitals and temporary shelters for survivors - he even searched among the
corpses - but to no avail. His daughter seemed to have utterly
disappeared.
"Her school was destroyed, and I thought I had lost my
child," he told Beijing News.
He had to return to Mianyang where he stayed at
his relative's place and saw the TV show.
With the help of local police,
he got through on the TV station's hotline. The live show then became the stage
for a touching moment, in which Bai and her father were reunited over the
telephone. They began talking in the Sichuan dialect until Bai was overcome with
tears, and all she could do was weep as she listened to her father's soothing
words.
She eventually told her father: "Papa, now that you are OK, you
must help others!"
Zhang later recalled that moment, saying: "I didn't know
what to say, beside letting her know I was alive, and I couldn't
continue."
It was perhaps the only moment during the show when those in
the audience smiled. But it was only one among many of the event's moving
moments.
When Jiang Min, a policewoman from Beichuan county, walked
onstage, the audience applauded for half a minute. Jiang had lost 10 family
members in the quake but coped with her loss by rescuing others in Pengzhou
city, where she now works, until she fainted from exhaustion.
She vividly
remembers her 2-year-old daughter's last words: "I miss you mama. When will you
come back to see me?"
The earthquake hit four hours later. Both her
hometown of Beichuan and the city in which she worked, Pengzhou, were
devastated. Jiang and her colleagues immediately devoted themselves to rescue
work.
She tried calling home but could not get through. It was only 16
hours later that she received a call from her uncle, who told her 10 family
members, including her daughter, mother and grandmother, had lost their
lives.
Although devastated by the news, Jiang did not leave the
frontlines of the rescue work. Her husband walked all the way to Beichuan alone
and later returned in sorrow and desperation.
"I had hoped he would bring
back something for me, but he had nothing," Jiang said in a quavering voice
during the TV event. "They are buried more than 10 meters deep, so it's
impossible to find them - impossible. I want to say to my mother: 'Sorry Mom; I
didn't come back to you at that moment'."
Outstanding courage and
commitment were also shown by the 15 paratroopers who landed in Maoxian county,
Sichuan province, two days after the quake. They all wrote their last words
before making the perilous 5,000-m leap, complicated by dangerous land
formations, a lack of guidance from the ground as well of landmarks or
meteorological data.
It was the first time in the modern history of the
People's Liberation Army that its paratroopers joined disaster relief work. The
CCTV show played footage of the soldiers preparing for the jump, stirring
applause and tears from audience members.
Former CCTV anchor Li Jiaming
is a Sichuan native. He was studying in the United States when the quake
devastated the province but boarded the first China-bound plane he could after
hearing the news. However, his mother refused to let him return to his
hometown.
"My mother said the rice or water I would consume could have
saved a life, so she would not allow me to go back," Li said on the
show.
After the quake, Li's mother stayed at home all day every day,
making batch after batch of steamed buns for the soldiers. Using the TV show's
broadcast, Li pleaded with his mother to move to a safer place.
Zhang
Qingxiang, chairman of Tianjin Rockcheck Steel Group Co Ltd and a survivor of
the Tangshan earthquake, which killed about 240,000 in 1976, donated 30 million
yuan ($4.3 million). But on the live show he decided to give an additional 70
million yuan ($10 million).
"Most of our staff are from Tangshan," he
said. "We experienced the quake in 1976, so it is our obligation to help the
people of Sichuan."
Within four hours, the show generated more than 1.5
billion yuan ($215 million) for relief efforts.
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