By Li Chengpeng (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-22 10:13

About 2:20 pm on May 12, young Deng Lijun - with the same name as the late singing legend Teresa Teng from the 1980s - made her way down three flights of stairs to the restroom, 10 minutes before joining her classmates in their exercises. She was allowed to leave early because her left leg, hindered by polio, made walking difficult.

Students of Dengjia Liuhan Primary School in Beichuan share a happy moment in Mianyang. [China Daily]

As she reached the open area on the first floor, the ground began to quiver and rumble. She ran with all her might, crawling if she fell, until she reached a bamboo grove on the school grounds. A teacher had called for everyone to gather, so Deng and several female classmates joined the group in the open space.

All 483 students from her elementary school were led away from the shaking building.

It was a miracle. Elsewhere in Beichuan, the 8.0-magnitude earthquake buried more than 2,000 students. What is more, nine teachers had led 71 students who lost contact with their families on a harrowing journey to reach the city of Mianyang. The youngest one among the students is 4 years old.

Teacher Xiao Xiaochuan later "tricked" students into descending the mountain.

If asked to explain what he did on May 12, Xiao Xiao probably would not be able to answer. No one taught the teacher how to evacuate a building in a disaster.

Yet he managed to do it with near scientific precision and amazing efficiency.

Last Monday morning, the teacher was reading in his office when he noticed his book shaking on the table. Frightened, he and a school patrol officer shouted for the students to run to the drill area outside.

An evacuation expert said that Xiao and the students carried every step of what could be found in a standard survival handbook. They squatted low to the ground. They ran to a lower level and then out into the open. They constructed simple tents.

The group could not stay on the grounds for long, however. Mud and rocks flowed down the mountain, and the quake had already demolished a town below. Xiao helped the children to higher ground.

He chopped down bamboo and scavenged scraps of cloth to construct a rudimentary tent. It was so crowded in the makeshift shelter that the 483 students huddled together back-to-back the whole night, with no room to move. Like a shepherd guarding his sheep, the teacher watched over his students.

Outside, rain fell in wild torrents. Loose boulders thundered down the slopes, and tremors continued to jostle the dark mountain.

Later, little Deng smiled as she recounted their escape; she remembered who stumbled and who cried for their mothers.

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