China Begins Three Days of Mourning for Quake Victims
Mianyang, China — With factory hooters and car horns blaring, China began three days of national mourning yesterday for the 50,000 dead of the Sichuan earthquake.
Greg Baker/AP
MOMENTS OF SILENCE China stood still and sirens wailed yesterday to mourn the country's tens of thousands of earthquake victims, a week after the powerful earthquake hit Sichuan province. A paramilitary police rescue crew stands in a collapsed building for three minutes of silence as a mark of respect to the victims.
Rescue work stopped on hundreds of collapsed buildings in devastated towns and villages at 2:28 p.m., a week to the minute after the ground began to shake across the province.
In streets and squares, people stood with heads bowed, led by state leaders lined up outside the central government offices.
Afterward, in Tiananmen Square in Beijing and in the main square in Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital, thousands staged patriotic demonstrations. They punched the air and shouted "Zhongguo Jia You" — "Go! Go! China" — in apparently spontaneous attempts to boost national morale.
In the towns that have taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the earthquake zone, the atmosphere was more subdued.
Among the most poignant scenes was the main hall of a television factory in Mianyang, a city of 800,000 people, which is also now home to the remaining population of Beichuan county.
Beichuan is one of the worst hit places, with several schools completely demolished in the town and residents of remote villages still clambering over broken roads to find aid. The factory has been turned into a camp for middle school students who have lost their families, in the hope that it can be a focal point for parents looking for their children.
Each of the 860 students has been given a sleeping bag, a red holdall for whatever remains of their possessions, and a small towel. As a siren sounded, hundreds of teenagers stood to attention in rows in front of beds made of cardboard strips.
A television set showed a ceremony live from Tiananmen Square, with the national anthem followed by the raising of the Chinese flag in front of the portrait of Chairman Mao that hangs over the entrance to the Forbidden City. During the silence, it switched to pictures of rescue workers also standing to attention, ending with the site at Beichuan middle school, where 1,000 children are feared dead.
Some of those in the Changhong factory were survivors from the school. Jiang Huaiqin, 17, said 39 of her classmates died.
