From the Christian Science Monitor:
Mu Guangchan’s mother, a wiry 70-year-old widow who farms corn in the mountains of Sichuan, is a self-reliant sort. So when the May 12 earthquake destroyed her village home she built herself a shelter and sat tight.
Mr. Mu, a migrant worker on a construction site in Beijing, 1,300 miles away, guessed that’s what she would do. So he got on a train to go fetch her. “She’s stubborn,” Mu said, as he and his mother, after a walk of several hours across mudslides, reached the road that would take them to a relief center. “And there are other old people in her village who won’t come down unless their children come to get them.”
From the mountains around Beichuan, one of the regions worst affected by the quake that officials said Monday has killed at least 34,073 people, villagers were still arriving at reception points in this devastated southwestern province. Untold numbers of migrant workers across the country, meanwhile, were flooding back to their homes to seek and care for their families.
