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Suddenly, row after row of buildings began to spring up along the horizon, like a series of neatly stacked matchboxes.

Before long, the rows of five to six storey buildings stretched for miles, like a sprawling urban forest.

This was the reconstruction of Tangshan a city rapidly rebuilt after it was wiped out by one of the most destructive earthquakes in human history on July 28, 1976.

Official figures put the death toll at more than 240,000, with 700,000 injured. The city had an urban population of about 1 million then.

Three decades later, it's still too painful to talk about for many of Tangshan's residents.

Brothers Wang Wenbo and Wang Wenlan were members of a contingent of about 10,000 People's Liberation Army soldiers dispatched on the rescue and rebuilding mission.

Now they have returned to Tangshan from Beijing as photographers working on an album memorializing the earthquake, which will include rare photos taken in the aftermath 30 years ago.

"Although I had prepared myself, I was unable to breathe when I saw Tangshan," recalled Wang Wenbo, now 55.

"What used to be a city, full of life and activity, was no more.

"In one instant, before anyone could run, the city was knocked down, reduced to an immense pile of debris along with everything in it. And where some remnants of what used to be bigger buildings still stood, human bodies dangled out of the windows."

Wang Wenbo is still troubled by what he remembers.

"We could already see human bodies here and there on the ground when we were still dozens of kilometres from Tangshan," he said.

"As we got closer, we saw thousands of survivors fleeing the city along the road. Many were wearing nothing but underwear. Women were crossing their arms in front of their chests when they saw us."

Residents were provided temporary lodging in rescue centres built by the army, and food and clothing were brought in from other parts of the country, Wang Wenbo said.

Despite the unimaginable impact on their lives, the people of Tangshan began to rebuild.

Chang Qing, 71, is a photographer who has lived in Tangshan for more than 50 years.

"At first, I thought we were under an enemy country's air raid," he said.

But the building in which Chang's family lived was one of the sturdiest built in Tangshan, and they all survived.

"For a while," Chang said, "my wife and I and our neighbours kept arguing about what had actually happened: Was it an air raid or an atomic bomb? It wasn't until sunrise, when we made our way to the main road and saw what had happened, that we knew the answer."

He remembers gasping "My heavens!" alongside his neighbours as they realized they were a rare group of about 20 residents city-wide who made it out of their houses unscathed.

While waiting for rescuers to arrive, they talked about rebuilding their community.

They pulled some rugs from under the debris of a nearby bicycle factory and tied the rugs' corners to trees to build a huge, makeshift tent they could all move into.

Thus, one of Tangshan's first post-quake communities was born. The community remained fully functional under the "rug roof" for the next two months.

"We had true communism," he said, "and shared all of the important resources from the food we dug out of the debris to the water we got from a small pit across from the tent."

Meals were cooked in one pot. Residents swapped clothes to provide everyone with just enough to cover his or her body until large quantities of relief goods were shipped to Tangshan a week later.

Even then, the goods distributed to all of them were stored in one corner and shared according to each person's needs.

Chang hastened to add that all survivors in Tangshan lived in such communities of temporary communism, whether for a longer or a shorter time.

"It was a time when a man who had two shirts would give one to a stranger in the street," he said.

He also admitted that his situation was rare and he was fortunate compared to other Tangshan survivors.

"Every Tangshan person can tell you as many stories as you could write in a book, but rarely do people have the guts to do that, to relive their heart-breaking past, you know," he said.

Harrowing memories

Wang Shubin, 54, lived in a simply furnished apartment in one of the "matchbox" buildings. He lost his wife, his father and his sister in the quake.

He wept as he took a photo album out of a locked drawer and pointed to the portrait of a young woman with two beautifully tied, long braids.

"She shouldn't have been so stubborn," he murmured, shaking his head. "Nothing would have happened to her if she hadn't insisted."

On the evening of July 27, she insisted that her husband go to the hospital after he had suffered from diarrhea for a few days. After she made sure he was comfortable in his hospital bed, she lay in the bed next to his.

Both were buried in the debris for four days. Wang watched helplessly as his wife of less than two years died.

He said he remembered clearly hearing her say, in a gentle voice: "I miss our baby. She is so cute. You're going to bring her up, aren't you? Tell me you will, please. Tell me you will."

Wang listened to her repeat the same sentences again and again, but all he could do was to reach out his hand. He could only touch the tip of one of her fingers until, eventually, her voice faded and her hand became cold.

"She was wearing that pink dacron shirt I bought for her in Tianjin," he recalled tearfully. As a young miner, he had saved the equivalent of a whole month's salary to buy her the surprise.

PLA rescuers found Wang on the eighth day of his ordeal. He was rushed to another city for medical treatment.

When he returned to Tangshan three months later to resume work at the alumina mine, he couldn't find the place his wife had been buried.

There was no cemetery for earthquake victims.

To prevent an outbreak of diseases among survivors, the PLA soldiers mass-buried all the bodies within a month.

Having lost their home, Wang and his mother built a simple brick house where they lived for 16 years before they moved into a new building.

Although the government has been building new houses since 1977, people say there are still survivors living in makeshift dwellings.

Wang's mother remarried four years after the earthquake, and Wang remarried another four years later.

His second daughter was born on the 10th anniversary of the disaster, bringing the number of people in his new family up to six: Wang and his wife, his mother and stepfather and his two daughters.

Today, Wang's family earns a meagre income because the mine he worked for went bankrupt 10 years ago.

He now makes money by painting posters.

Despite such hardships, Wang said he is satisfied with life. He said his life today is "harmonious and full of fun."

Wang seldom leaves his family when he is not working. But before sunrise on July 28 every year, he would leave his house and walk alone to join thousands of survivors in the street.

They gather at every crossroad to burn "paper money." It is a folk ritual in China to make offerings of immitations of banknotes to deceased loved ones.

"Tangshan does this every year, although the nightmare happened 30 years ago and we already have a new city," Chang said.

"In one moment many fires quietly burn in the street, driving away the darkness and welcoming the rising sun."

(China Daily June 22, 2006)