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The first time Tan Qinghua came to Tangshan was in the early morning of July 29, 1976. He was among the first People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers to reach the city, which had been razed to the ground one day earlier.

"Not a single building was still standing. The road was less than 2 metres wide as much of it was covered with debris," said Tan. Everywhere he turned there were people screaming for help or crying out for loved ones.

A day earlier, Tan was camping out with his fellow soldiers when he felt a jolt. He jumped up and rushed outside.

That was 3:42 am on July 28. An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale hit Tangshan in North China's Hebei Province, and Tan, whose division was in Jinzhou in Northeast China's Liaoning Province some 600 kilometres away, was shaken awake by it.

Eight hours later, Tan and thousands of his comrades in the 118th Division of the 40th Army were sent on what turned out to be a rescue mission of biblical proportions.

"When we arrived at the Luanhe River in Hebei Province in the evening we found the bridge had buckled. We waited for several hours. There was a wooden crossing nearby built before 1949 that had fallen into disrepair. Finally, a division commander decided to try his luck. It didn't crumble. Other vehicles followed," recalled Tan.

And according to Zhang Xiduo, another soldier in the same regiment, later many trucks tried to wade through and some became stuck or capsized in the river.

'Not a single drop to drink'

Tan's company was assigned to work in Tangshan's Guye District. During the first few days, food supply was short.

"Usually when we went on a march, we would bring the cooks with us. But this time everything happened in such a short notice. Medical supplies arrived three days later," he said.

Worse than food shortage was the lack of drinking water. "Whatever little water came through, it was hardly enough even for locals."

The soldiers had to drink from the river, but the river was swamped with dead bodies, which, in the blistering heat, were dripping with oil. "We'd try to scoop it up from beneath the thick layer of residue. And then we'd add some antibacterial pills to dissolve in the water. But still, many fell sick after drinking. But that beat dying from thirst."

The rail lines around Tangshan looked as if someone had used them as dancing ribbons. Highways had cracked open in many places. Rescue goods were shipped first on trains and then transferred to trucks, sometimes moving even as aftershocks rumbled. After unloading the goods, they would take the seriously injured and move them to hospitals in outlying cities.

In the first 14 days, Tangshan airport handled 3,000 flights, totalling the sum of the previous three years. With no radar equipment and only one communication truck still working, the only five surviving air traffic controllers used their naked eyes to direct all the emergency flights, creating what was later called "the lifeline in the air," without a single accident.

"The first 16 days were the most difficult," continued Tan. "We did not have any machinery to help remove the concrete slabs. All we had was some spades. And if we suspected a survivor was buried underneath the rubble, we had to be very careful lest the heap fell further down. Often we used our own hands." At the insistence of this reporter, he showed his nails, which were broken and scarred beyond repair.

"Many of my comrades lost all their nails, but nobody had any complaints," he said, downplaying the hardship.

'We should have saved more'

That was not the worst of it. On the night of July 29, during a series of aftershocks registering 5 or higher, Tan and his team heard a faint voice in a four-storey building in a mining district. They attempted to jack up the roof, but one part would cave in as another was plied open. In his haste for his soldiers to climb into the building, Tan used his own body as support.

Just as the soldiers were carrying two babies through the cracks, there was another aftershock. Tan felt the wreckage beneath him shaking. If he jumped to safety, that might have endangered the others, so he stood still. Then, the ruins crumbled again. He fell with them, the roof crashing onto him.

When he came to, it was the next morning. He had suffered a severe skull fracture, and some of his teeth were knocked out.

He needed to be shipped out for an operation, but he insisted he stay so that more locals could be accommodated on the vehicle. Doctors put plaster on two bamboo poles to straighten him, one on his chest, one on his back. Soon, he rejoined his comrades.

One soldier in Tan's company lost his life in a similar incident.

"I don't know his name, but I remember he was from Hubei Province," he said.

Unlike what happens in films, the soldiers did not remember any of the names of those they rescued, not even the number. "Our company must have saved thousands, but it was a group effort, and nobody thought about asking their names."

Nor did the survivors. The image of a PLA soldier standing against the sunlight, after being buried for days, hungry and dazed, was etched indelibly in the minds of many survivors.

"We couldn't tell one from another. But I remember many of them were quite short in stature, probably from the southern provinces," said survivor Dong Xiaoming, who was barely a teenager when he was buried under 120 concrete slabs weighing at least 100 tons. It took soldiers from another regiment 56 hours to get him to safety.

A total of 140,000 soldiers from 11 divisions participated in the rescue-and-reconstruction mission.

The survivor who left the biggest impression on Tan was also a 10-year-old. "Please save my parents and grandma," he said, as he grabbed Tan's arm and pointed to a pile of rubble. But by the time his team dug through, both the boy's parents were dead and his grandmother was in serious condition. The scene filled him with guilt.

"Maybe we could have saved them if we worked harder."

Carrying the injured out of the debris was no easy task. There were few stretchers, but those with fractured bones must be carried with extreme care. "We could not just carry them on our backs. We used the door, but that required four people to hold it together."

There were a few isolated incidents when a whole family went unscathed. But most suffered losses of varying degrees. Sometimes a whole family was completed decimated.

"By the end of the first two weeks, chances of saving someone from the debris had basically evaporated. Then our task shifted from rescue to helping locals tide over difficulties by building makeshift houses," he said.

During that time, locals got to know the soldiers on a first-name basis. Sun Xiuzhen, then 50, wanted to "adopt" a squad leader whom she had nicknamed "Xiao Yingzi" because he continued putting up her makeshift home even in a downpour. "And he was suffering from a 40-degree fever," she said, adding that she would like the press to help her locate this soldier with whom she had lost contact.

Emotional farewell

Tan Qinghua stayed in Tangshan for 82 days.

"The day we departed, in mid-October, the whole city came out to bid us farewell. People brought fruit, eggs and all sorts of things and tossed them onto our trucks. Every truck was piled half a foot high with food and gifts brought by locals. We hardly had space to stand. Everyone had tears, and I remember an old lady who grabbed our vehicle and wouldn't let us go. In the end, our driver had to start the engine and move at a snail's pace," he said in a calm voice.

"That was the most moving spectacle in my whole life. I felt I had done something worthwhile," said the stoic Harbin native.

On his first return visit to Tangshan early this week, Tan did not show much emotion, except when facing the wall of photos showing soldiers digging through the debris in the new Tangshan Anti-earthquake Museum. There was a teary glint in his eyes, but he soon suppressed it.

"I went to Guye District yesterday. I couldn't recognize any of it. The only sign that I was there 30 years ago was the contour of the mountain in the background."

Asked what had prompted him to risk his life in the rescue effort, he said simply: "I was a soldier. Obeying orders is what a soldier is supposed to do."

(China Daily July 28, 2006)