Names on a wall help Tangshan remember
Print Edition
THERE are tens of thousands of names written on a wall in north China’ s Tangshan City, but 79-year-old Zhao Yaxin was looking for just two — his wife Han Xiuying and their elder son who died with her in an earthquake 40 years ago.
A total of 13 black walls stand in the Tangshan Earthquake Ruins Memorial Park. Bearing the names of the victims, they serve as gravestones as many victims’ bodies were never retrieved. The walls, over seven meters tall, extend nearly 500 meters.
Around every tomb-sweeping day, about 100,000 people would come to the walls to mourn their dead and leave wreaths and scrolls with elegiac couplets.
At night, the flames from paper money dots the streets of Tangshan like stars in the sky.
Most people in Tangshan, an industrial city in Hebei Province, were asleep when the 7.8-magnitude quake stroke at 3:42am on July 28, 1976. More than 242,000 people were killed, 7,200 families died together.
Zhao has commemorated his wife and son more than a 100 times over the 40 years, but he can never let go. He wrote down where his loved ones’ names are on the wall on two pieces of paper, one for his wife; the other for his son Zhao Yue, so that he can find them quickly.
After the quake, Zhao raised their younger son by himself and devoted his life to research into earthquake-resistent buildings, only retiring at the age of 75.
Tian Fang, 53, and his grandson took a long-distance bus from rural Tangshan to the memorial park. They placed two wreaths of flowers at the wall.
Tian was 13 when a beam collapsed on his mother and younger brother in front of him. The quake destroyed 97 percent of buildings in Tangshan, reducing the city of around a million people at the time into ruins.
Today, Tangshan is one of the most modern and developed cities in Hebei with 7.8 million people living there.
“It happened when I was a child, now I am a grandfather. But I still miss my mother and younger brother. As my life moves on and gets better, I miss them even more,” Tian said. It’s not just sorrow people are feeling in Tangshan.
Recalling the help he and his sister received after the quake, 73-year-old Li Baoli’s eyes were filled with tears of gratitude. They were taken by air to east China’s Jinan City for treatment to their injured legs.
“It was hard times for China. But every one did their best to help us, giving us everything that we could possibly need,” Li said.
Shop owners offered them goods for free after learning they were survivors of the quake, he said.
With Tangshan’s hospitals destroyed, more than 160,000 people were transferred to 17 provinces across China for treatment. Today, survivors have formed groups to look for those who helped them.
Recalling the kindness of others , Li dried his tears and smiled.
His granddaughter turned from the wreaths to tell him: “You told me not to smile, but you are smiling yourself.”
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