By Cao Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-22 10:19

For 58-year-old Shi Yanfen, the distance between life and death had never been so close.

The Shanghai resident was traveling from Wolong to Dujiangyan in Sichuan province as part of a tour when the quake hit the region on May 12.

"Our bus began to shake suddenly, the driver said the steering wheel was out of control, I looked out of the window and found the road cracking and big blocks of stones falling behind us," Shi, still shivering as she recalled the experience, told China Daily.

"I saw two people falling along with the rocks - the woman still alive and the man motionless."

The bus driver managed to park the vehicle by the road and all tourists aboard began to flee for their lives, Shi said.

But someone in the group soon came back and said that an elevated highway ahead had snapped into two.

The driver decided to check out the road ahead, Shi said.

"He came back after half an hour and advised us to leave before things got worse, so we started our 5-hour walk," she said.

"Rocks were falling down from mountain and the roads shook once in a while."

The eldest in Shi's group, aged 74, was aided by his daughter and son-in-law during the walk.

"People took turns carrying their bags," Shi said.

The driver also did what he could to help Shi during the ordeal.

"At some dangerous points, the driver put his foot in front and asked me to step on it for safety," she said.

"Local people along the way instructed us on where to go when many major roads were destroyed."

The group arrived at a coach station close to Dujiangyan before sunset.

"The driver found us a car and drove all of us, five by five, to a public square close to Jinxin Hotel in Chengdu," she said.

"The Chengdu office of our travel agency brought us water, food and sheets, which we could lay on the ground and sit on."

Shi and others in the group went to Jinxin Hotel around midnight, but had to run out of the building several times when aftershocks occurred. They stayed in a bus the next day and were driven to Mianyang Airport at about eight in the evening.

Their flight, the first one that took back tourists to Shanghai after the quake, landed at about 3am.

"I am lucky to have survived and am very grateful to those who helped us," Shi said.

She and her family went to a restaurant named Anwen, which literally means peaceful, for dinner last evening.

Statistics showed that 1,411 Shanghai residents, including 14 expats, were traveling during the quake. One woman died in a landslide.