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Sichuan folk still full of festive cheer

By Xie Fang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-24 08:03

MIANZHU, Sichuan -- Despite losing all of her belongings in the May 12 earthquake, Li Huahui said she feels lucky, because no one in her family was injured in the disaster.

A baby looks at red lanterns hung up for the upcoming Spring Festival at a makeshift residential area in Yingxiu, the epicenter of the May Sichuan earthquake, January, 22. 2009. [CFP]

Determined to make this Lunar New Year family reunion dinner particularly special, the 70-year-old said she began her Spring Festival shopping a month ago.

Bereft of their homes, Li and nearly 30,000 other quake survivors will see in this New Year in a prefabricated shelter in Jiannan county, Mianzhu, a two-hour drive from Chengdu, the Sichuan capital.

Mianzhu is home to more than half a million people, but less than 10 percent of its houses survived the quake.

Since May, 50,000 people have been living in prefabricated shelters on the outskirts of the city.

Li's room is plain but neat. A pink cord fabric divides her 12 sq m into two areas: one for dining, one for resting.

A double mattress, held up with bricks, occupies one corner, while an empty soda bottle, cut in half, serves as a container for chopsticks.

Overhead, cured meats, sausages and chickens hang from hooks, giving the room a festive feel.

"We just have to make use of whatever we have available," Li said.

"The three chairs, for example, are all different, but I don't care. I'm just happy that all of my relatives are safe," she said.

Nine family members will join Li for this year's reunion dinner, so she and her husband had to prepare all the meats well in advance, she said.

She said she has prepared hongbao (red envelopes containing money) for her grandchildren, and to make sure she looks her best for the annual celebration, even splashed out 5 yuan (70 cents) on a haircut.

"After the festival, workers will start rebuilding my house. I hope we'll be able to move back there in May," she said.

Unlike Li, 50-year-old Zhang Zhiwen said he will not have time for a family feast this year as he will be working as a volunteer patrolman at the shelter site.

"As I was eating my first free dinner in a canteen after the quake, I made up my mind to do something for the community," the father of two said.

Luo Jun, the shelter's vice-director, said that rather than having a dinner, he and his family will this year have a holiday lunch, as he has to work in the evening.

"We've got plenty of quilts and food, but we're short of help over the festival," he said.

Five teams will work around the shelter, providing everything from security to road maintenance and fire prevention services, Luo said.

"We've already had several fire drills to make sure everyone knows what to do," Luo said.