Premier Wen Jiabao continued his second trip around the quake disaster zone on Friday, visiting surviving students in Mianyang, one of the worst-hit cities in the May 12 quake.
Premier Wen Jiabao talks to a student who survived the earthquake during his inspection of a temporary school set up inside a tent in Mianyang, Sichuan province May 23, 2008. [Agencies]
In a tent school, where more than 500 students from the destroyed Beichuan Middle School were studying, Wen encouraged them to study harder following the calamity.
"Let us not forget the earthquake," he told the students in a tender voice. "Then you will know what life is all about -- it is bumpy, as the roads are."
"Today, people save us and take good care of us. In the future, we will help them in return," the premier added.
"Trials and tribulations serve only to revitalize the nation," he wrote on the blackboard to encourage them.
The students, many of whose 1,300 schoolmates and teachers were killed or missing, resumed classes on Monday.
Wen also visited tent schools near the Jiuzhou Indoor Stadium in downtown Mianyang. There, he put on a red scarf and joined primary school students to salute the quake dead.
During his visit on Friday, the premier underlined that providing shelters for the quake victims and preventing infectious diseases and secondary disasters are the priorities of the current relief work.
His first trip to the region was just hours after the mid-afternoon earthquake jolted Sichuan.
(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2008)