China Remembers Quake With Flowers, Anger
State leaders laid flowers and survivors burned paper money for departed spirits as a mournful China marked the first anniversary Tuesday of a devastating earthquake that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless.
Addressing a memorial service before a destroyed school in the Sichuan province town of Yinxiu, President Hu Jintao pledged strengthened support for rebuilding and disaster prevention.
"We must strengthen our will, and increase our momentum, and overcome difficulties, and spare no effort to finish the three year target of rebuilding within two years," said Hu, before leading military and civilian leaders, diplomats, students and emergency services workers in laying carnations before a stone memorial.
The 30-minute ceremony followed a minute of silence beginning at 2:28 p.m., the moment the magnitude-7.9 temblor - the deadliest earthquake to hit China in decades - struck on May 12, 2008, toppling or burying villages, snapping bridges and razing large portions of Sichuan and two neighboring provinces.
The somber, nationally televised ceremony filled with flowers and speeches - providing an unusually cathartic public moment for the normally distant Chinese leadership- underscored the disaster's searing effect on the national consciousness.
Traffic was heavy on narrow roads leading into the deep mountains that surround Beichuan, the closest major town to the epicenter of the quake. Police blocked roads about 3 miles from the heart of the old town, leaving hundreds of former residents to stream into the mountains on foot, many heading out before dawn.
Grief And Anger
Mourners gathered at a destroyed middle school in Beichuan where about one thousand students and faculty were killed, piling flowers and burning candles and sticks of incense amid the smoke and crackle of exploding firecrackers.
Many brought pictures of their dead children and pasted notes to a metal fence surrounding the rubble.
Burning paper money as an offering to their 17-year-old son who was crushed in the school collapse, Jin Dalan and her husband Chen Guanghui gave voice both to their bereavement and continuing resentment over the government's treatment of parents.
"I'm just trying to talk to him to ask why he doesn't visit me in my dreams. I just want to know that he's OK and that no one is bullying him," said Jin, 45.
Chen, like many parents of dead students, said he was still waiting for a proper response to allegations that school's were inherently unsafe as a result of shoddy construction enabled by corruption and weak oversight.
"Of course I'm angry. The school was badly built. Nothing else around here collapsed," Chen, 47, said.
Wu Zhenwei and his wife, Fu Guiqun, lost their son, Wu Pin, during the earthquake. He was studying at the Beichuan Middle School, and they searched for days to find his body, but he is still missing.
They say their mourning has now turned to anger, and they hold the government responsible for the poorly-built school buildings.
Wu Zhenwei, a construction worker, said he has built pig pens that could withstand more than the school in Beichuan.
"I work in construction and some of the pig pens that I have built in the past 10 to 20 years are stronger. The buildings that our country built can withstand earthquakes of 7 to 8 magnitude but the schools are shoddily built," he said.
Fu Guiqun said she wants to continue fighting for justice for her son.
"Our son is dead, I don't feel like living anymore so I am not afraid, I want to speak up. My son died a terrible death. Why did the school have to collapse, the buildings are so poorly constructed?" she said.
The quake cast a shadow over the Beijing Summer Olympics that followed in August, and while Chinese media have continued to report on developments in the quake zones, new concerns have since begun to compete for attention.
Although the government continues to fund reconstruction, the devastation to the local economy (accompanied by the global economic crisis) has cast doubts on whether the remote region will ever fully recover.
In the days leading up to the anniversary, the nation struggled with the worldwide outbreak of swine flu, with China's first case officially confirmed in Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu on Monday.
Critics Of Corruption Silenced
The most politically incendiary issue, however, remains the issue of school safety amid allegations that corruption and mismanagement led to shoddy construction.
Parents have tried to sue or petition local and central authorities, but many have been detained or warned against speaking out.
Activists and lawyers who have tried to help them have met the same fate.
CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton reports the government has made the issue taboo, raising tensions in the quake zone. CBS News was questioned by Sichuan police while reporting on the anniversary; other foreign journalists for the Financial Times were assaulted.
So volatile is the issue that until last week, the government had refused to release an official tally of students who died, saying the task was complicated and time-consuming.
That figure, released in an apparent response to public pressure, showed 5,335 students were killed in the quake - although parents and activists say the number is too low.
So far, no one has been punished or held responsible over the schools, and officials insist that they have not found evidence so far of shoddy construction - a claim questioned by experts and parents alike.
Xu Changyun, a 39-year-old construction worker who also lost his son at the Beichuan school, said parents were losing hope of ever finding justice.
"I've lost all the hope deep inside, and I don't think our effort will have any effect," Xu said.