In the New York Times, Edward Wong reports on how earthquake survivors are keeping alive memories from before the devastation, now that there is no hope of anyone else being rescued:
What the people digging through the rubble here at the center of the earthquake zone are pulling out now is entirely inanimate. There are car parts and real estate deeds and clothes for infants. A woman scours the debris every day for firewood to carry back to a tent where 13 families have taken refuge. Another leafs through her son’s wedding photo album, dust-filled and lifted from the ruins of her home.
They are what the survivors need to carry on with their lives, to piece back together some of what was snatched from them by the earthquake on May 12.
Sang Yuping spreads out a half-dozen photographs on a mattress in the tent that was given to her by the government. Across the road lie the remains of her one-story home. Long wooden planks protrude from the pile at every angle like whale bones.
