China Mourns Student Victims
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Dujiangyan, China — The wails of mothers and the smoke of firecrackers lit to mourn dead children fill the air where Juyuan middle school once stood.
Throughout the night of the Sichuan earthquake, and all day yesterday, the rescue of its 900 pupils turned into a routine of death.
As stretcher-bearers ran through parallel lines of soldiers clearing a path to the ambulances, the crowd would surge forward.
Then it groaned as it saw, again, that the body on the stretcher was already wrapped in a shroud. Some of the shrouds were already marked with the name of the victim. These were, where possible, handed over to the parents.
Scores of small corpses — some victims were 12 or younger — lay under tarpaulins beneath the hoops of the school basketball court. While the women intoned their grief, the men lit candles or readjusted the covers to keep out the rain of the Sichuan spring.
