Her roommates used to call her a "lazy pig" for trying to sleep in before class - but it was Song Yuhuan's slowness to get out of bed that saved her life - the girls who rushed from their dorm were crushed by the walls collapsing in an earthquake that leveled their town and left 1,484 dead. The 18-year-old was trapped briefly by Wednesday morning's quake, a leg and arm pinned under a wall of the third-floor room. Instead of panicking, she felt a steely calm as the others around her screamed.
"Stop screaming," she told them, "and I'll get out first and then I'll help you." An aftershock a few minutes later allowed her to slip free.
But three of her seven roommates died, and a fourth was still missing. Officials say more than 40 of her classmates at the Minorities Vocational School died, and at least 103 students in this remote Tibetan corner of western China were killed.
Moved by the disaster, the exiled Dalai Lama said Saturday he'd like to visit the site, though he has never returned to China since he fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
"To fulfill the wishes of many of the people there, I am eager to go there myself to offer them comfort," the Tibetan spiritual leader said. There was no immediate comment from China's government.
On Saturday, monks in face masks set ablaze piles of blanket-wrapped bodies in a mass cremation, as necessity forced them to break with the tradition of leaving their dead out for vultures.
Hundreds of villagers sat watching on the hillside, while monks chanted and prayed for the dead.
Life also showed the first small signs of returning to normal, with residents crowding to buy food from makeshift sidewalk stores.
The ruddy-cheeked Song continued to stand and watch as a rescue squad dug at the mangled pile of concrete that used to be her dorm. She was still wearing the tracksuit and purple sweat shirt with the word "Pittsburgh" she had on when the quake hit, and a pair of mismatched shoes.
Among the dead was her best friend, who had just put a drink for Song on their windowsill before running out when the shaking started and being crushed by the door frame. Song knew other victims. The class hunk, known for checking out his hair during class, was crushed by a wall as he rode his motorcycle to school.
"Stop screaming and I'll get out first
and then I'll help you."
- Song Yuhuan, China Quake Survivor
Up to five students were thought to still be somewhere under the collapsed buildings.
"If the boss of the construction company were here, I would ask him, if his daughter was here, would he have used shoddy materials?" Song asked, her voice wavering and tears welling in her eyes. She looked at the half-flattened girls' dorm. "Why is this side still standing and this side flat?"
Most of the buildings on the campus were still standing, if damaged, including the cafeteria, where most of the school's 1,800 students were when the quake hit Wednesday morning.
"The cafeteria didn't collapse. If it had, it would have been much worse. The death toll would be much higher," said Danzhen Cairen, deputy chief of the local education bureau.
The quake destroyed more than a third of the school buildings in Jiegu and rendered the rest dangerous, according to a statement on the Qinghai provincial government's news Web site. It said 684 students and teachers were wounded and another 73 were either buried in rubble or missing.
Shattered schools remain a sensitive issue in China, where a devastating 2008 quake killed thousands of students during class. But Wednesday's quake flattened schools and other buildings alike.
Overall, 312 people were still missing as of Saturday evening. Officials said another 12,088 were injured, including 1,394 seriously.
On Saturday, the first makeshift school started classes again, with 60 elementary and middle school students singing the national anthem, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. More classes were expected to resume Sunday.
"The past two days were
focused on rescuing people,
saving those trapped and digging out bodies.
Now, we're trying to help people
recover their valuables."
- Chen Zhenyun, military rescue team
In town, residents who had camped outdoors amid the debris and lived for days on water and instant noodles eagerly stuffed vegetables into plastic bags as a woman sold eggs and cans of soft drinks on the sidewalk, one of the first vendors to receive goods from out of town.
Officials said getting aid to the region, a 12-hour drive from the provincial capital, remained a problem. Only 22 planes of supplies had landed at Yushu's small airport as of early Saturday morning. Vice Transport Minister Gao Hongfeng told reporters in Beijing that it may rain and snow in the next few days, complicating efforts.
Aid workers said the distribution of aid was better than just after the quake, when desperate residents fought for limited supplies.
"I can't talk now, several of our trucks are arriving," said a breathless Pierre Deve, program director at a community development organization, the Snowland Service Group.
Rescue work was shifting. "The past two days were focused on rescuing people, saving those trapped and digging out bodies. Now, we're trying to help people recover their valuables," said Chen Zhenyun, a member of a military rescue team.
Song, the student who survived by sleeping in, still hopes to find the large teddy bear she was hugging when the earthquake began.
But even she was starting to look toward the future.
"I grew up a lot with this earthquake. I buried my tears and turned them into motivation," she said. "When school starts again, I'm going to study hard and be a doctor. Then I can really help people."
China Daily; AP; Reuters; writer Chi-Chi Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.
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