People watch a movie shown at the open space near the headquarters of disaster relief efforts in Yingxiu, Sichuan province, one of the worst-hit areas in the May 12 earthquake, on June 12. It was the first movie shown in the town since the quake. (Xinhua photo)

Yingxiu, through which the Minjiang River flows, is demolished in the quake in this May 14 photo. (Xinhua photo)

Temporary housing set up in Yingxiu for quake victims.

Lying more than 50 km south of Wenchuan county, Yingxiu, the epicenter of the deadly quake that hit Sichuan province on May 12, had seemed like a devastated battlefield in the early days of the disaster.

More than one month later, in a nationwide effort to pick up the pieces, Yingxiu is steadily on the road to reconstruction.

Mobile hospitals, temporary shelters and makeshift grocery stores peddling basic necessities have sprouted among the wide expanse of collapsed buildings, lending a semblance of a return to normal life.

Still, looking down at the town from the top of a hillside dubbed the "Tomb of Tens of Thousands of People" for the innumerable corpses found in Yingxiu and buried at the site, the images of death and destruction from a month ago came flooding back: heavy rains, landslide-blocked mountain roads and People's Liberation Army troops scrambling to save lives from piles of debris.

Captain Liu Huichao from the "Iron Army" division of the Jinan Military Area Command had trekked into Yingxiu on the evening of May 14.