Gao Dan (left) looks at her 13-day old baby as they were evacuated from Yingxiu in Wenchuan yesterday. [Photo: AFP]

The extraordinary efforts of mothers and fathers to save their children are unforgettable.

Beichuan: The young woman buried beneath debris looked as if she performing an ancient ritual. The palms of her hands were placed flat on the ground and she was bent over.

A rescuer cried out to her, but there was no reply. The rescue team was about to move on and look for more survivors, when the team captain returned to have one more look. He found a baby under her body.

"A baby is still alive!" he said.

The three- or four-month-old old baby was wrapped in a quilt. Uninjured, the baby was sleeping quietly.

His sweet, chubby face brought some comfort to those around him at the disaster site. Holding the baby up, a mobile phone was revealed.

On the phone's screen, a text message read: "Dear baby, if you survive, please remember that I love you forever."

The rescuers, hardened by the horrors of the disaster zone, could not help crying.

Baby survives on dead mother's breast

Dujiangyan: Another three-month baby was discovered yesterday still suckling to her dead mother's breast.

When rescuers reached the infant, she breathed heavily while still sucking her dead mother's nipple, completely unaware of the chaos around. Her soft, pink face was a strong contrast to her mother's dust-covered breasts.

"We lifted the baby very carefully. But as soon as we pulled her away from her mother's breasts, the baby began to cry," said Gong Jin, a doctor from Guangzhou who volunteered in Dujiangyan.

"It is heartbreaking to imagine how a dying mother still tried to breast-feed her baby."

"You can tell from the way the mother was positioned that she tried to protect her baby from being hurt.

"Maybe she put her nipple into the baby's lips at the last minute of her life."

Daughter dies in dad's arms

Pingwu: Tao Qingping and his wife Wang Yonglan rushed to the primary school at Nanba town to rescue their daughter and son.

Their daughter suffered severe head and chest injuries. With their bare hands, the couple tried to pull her out.

After three hours the girl was still trapped under piles of concrete.

"I encourage her to stay brave," recalled Wang. "'Even if you saved me I will be disabled,' she told me.

"We will take care of you in our lifetime, I told her."

After seven hours, the girl was finally pulled out of the rubble but lived only another 30 minutes. Her 7-year-old brother, Tao Wenlong survived and is lucky to be alive. Of the 300 students, only 20 or 30 survived.

The boy suffered serious head injuries and his parents made an arduous journey by carrying him for more than eight hours over three muddy mountains before reaching Mianzhu city.

However, they found the hospital was full. They found a car and drove to Chengdu where Junior Tao received treatment at the No 2 People's Hospital. "It's terrible, really terrible," said Tao.

Son loses wife, parents, home

Beichaun: Working tirelessly amid the mangled mess of steel and concrete in what was the town of Beichuan, Liu Wenbo has helped save 700 people. But he could not save his wife.

Before Monday's quake, the 34-year-old was a tea salesman.

Starting on Tuesday, he donned military fatigues, a face-mask and a red armband marking him as a volunteer trying to find survivors of his former neighborhood.

His team had saved some 700 people but so far, had not rescued his wife or their parents.

"I no longer have a wife and I lost my house. All I've got are the clothes that I'm wearing," he said with a blank look behind his small oval glasses. He had tried in vain to call his wife by mobile telephone.

"It's hopeless," he said, standing on a pile of clothes and other assorted objects left from his once happy life, including pictures of him with his wife.

"They're down here," he said of his wife and in-laws, looking at the ground.

(China Daily, Agencies, May 18, 2008)