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THE CHINESE QUAKETiny bodies everywhere: single child policy compounds the griefTHE bodies are everywhere. Some are zipped inside white vinyl bags and strewn on the ground. Others have been covered in a favourite blanket or dressed in new clothes.There are so many bodies that undertakers want to cremate them in groups.They were all children."Our grief is incomparable," said Li Ping, 39, as he and his wife carefully pulled a pair of pink pyjamas over the bruised, naked body of their eight-year-old daughter, Ke. "We got married late, and had a child late. She is our only child."The earthquake that struck Sichuan province on Monday claimed tens of thousands of lives across China. But the awful scene at this morgue is a sad reminder that too many of the dead are children in a country where most families can have only one.These children symbolised the earthquake's seemingly indiscriminate cruelty. But the cruelty, in the eyes of their parents, was also man-made.Several schools in nearby Dujiangyan collapsed while classes were under way. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made emotional visits to two of them, including Xinjian Primary School, where parents say officials told him the death toll was 20 pupils.But enraged parents at the morgue say officials lied to the prime minister to hide the true toll at Xinjian, which they estimate at more than 400 dead children. Several parents blamed local officials for a slow initial rescue response and questioned the structural safety of the school building. They also were furious that officials forbade them to search for their children for two days and were then allowed access to the bodies only after they formed an ad hoc committee to complain about their treatment."Before Wen Jiabao came, the whole school was filled with children's bodies," said one mother who sat outdoors at the morgue with her husband in the early morning darkness beside the covered body of their eight-year-old daughter. "Her father and I had stood outside the school since the earthquake. We pleaded with the government, 'If she is dead, I want to see the body. If she is alive, I want to see her.'"The morgue is located an hour outside Dujiangyan on an isolated rural road, yet the car park was filled at 1.50am on Thursday. Parents and other family members clustered around the bodies of their children. Some burned fake money to bring their lost child good fortune in the afterlife. In one room, 25 small bodies were scattered on the floor. Some children had already been taken away."There are more in there," said a man in a blue shirt, pointing to a rear door. He walked outside to a covered walkway and paused. Scores of bodies, covered with sheets, were lined in two long rows on the concrete floor. Others were placed in an adjacent room. Parents sobbed or sat silently beside bodies."They are all students," said the man in the blue shirt. "Look," he said pointing to a red-and-white jacket folded beside one body. "That is the school uniform." He pointed to a Mickey Mouse backpack. "There is a book bag."The two rows of bodies led to an open door that led to the large steel furnaces used for cremation.In China, the dead are almost always cremated, usually fairly soon after death. Usually, there is enough time for funeral ceremonies and rituals, but parents said officials at the morgue were worried about cremating so many bodies. Some parents have now been asked if their children could be cremated with dead friends to save time.Parents say they were only allowed to begin identifying their children on Wednesday. The bodies had remained inside the grounds of Xinjian Primary School for two days until officials began transporting them to the morgue on Wednesday. The earthquake struck at 2.28pm on Monday, and many parents rushed immediately to the school, which taught about 600 pupils, aged seven to 12. When they arrived, most of the building had collapsed. "We pleaded with the administrators to help us," said one mother, Chen Li, who came to the morgue on Wednesday to identify her son. "We yelled, 'Where are the soldiers? Send them to help us!'"Parents say neighbours and students from a nearby college arrived by 4pm to help with the digging. Local officials and school administrators also came but then left after inspecting the site. Two more hours passed before a large group of paramilitary police officers arrived and told the parents to leave because the area was too dangerous. Parents were relocated outside the school gate, unable to watch as the officers began digging.Chen said her son, Zhang Yuanxin, was discovered on the same day as the earthquake but was then left uncovered in the rain with other bodies on the school playground. She said two large trucks arrived early on Wednesday morning and carried the bodies away shortly before Wen arrived."I think there were 50 bodies in two trucks that were carried away," Chen said. "I asked those people, 'Are you taking the bodies away?'"But she said local officials lied to her and said they were only taking away tents.
Crisis opens door to former enemies
Howard W French and Edward Wong in Mianyang
CHINA has departed from past diplomatic practice, seeking disaster relief experts and heavy equipment needed for rescue operations from neighbours it has long shunned as rivals or renegades.Officials on Thursday asked long-time rival Japan to send 60 earthquake rescue experts, the first such team China has accepted from a foreign country during the current crisis and one of the few official relief missions China has ever accepted from abroad. This week it also accepted help from at least three private relief teams from Taiwan, the self-governing island with which China has long had tense relations. The decision to seek outside help reflects the fact that the search for survivors of Monday's massive earthquake and the struggle to accommodate hundreds of thousands of displaced people from the mountainous region around the epicentre of the quake are too much for China to handle alone, even after it mobilised 130,000 army soldiers, security forces and medics for relief work.But the selective invitations to Japan and Taiwan – some foreign nations that have offered aid have so far been told their services are not needed – will also show that China sees disaster relief as a tactical tool to improve ties with neighbours and soften its international image ahead of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August.One Chinese relief official called the invitations to a relatively small number of overseas teams "rescue diplomacy".China has been eager to secure international goodwill in what has so far been a trying diplomatic year for the country, with crises involving Tibet, human rights, and pressure to reduce support for the Sudanese government.Both Japan and Taiwan have extensive experience with earthquakes. Japan in particular lies along an active fault and suffered a major quake in Kobe in 1995."This is of course very meaningful politically," said a Chinese relief official in Shanghai. "It means we're opening up and merging with international society. The biggest news is that Japanese are allowed into China. We're in the big family of rescue efforts now."
As in the days of Noah....
