Andreas Gschwandtl was once one of just four foreigners living in remote Guangyuan city in Sichuan Province.

As project manager for GTZ, an international cooperative organization for sustainable development, the German supervised the reconstruction of Guangyuan Nanying Primary School, paid for by the German Foreign Ministry, using Chinese laborers and architects, from November 2008 to February 2010.

"I enjoyed the days there very much and I miss being there now," he said.

"I experienced the post-quake and reconstruction period in the area hit by the horrible May 12 earthquake. I was moved by local people's enthusiasm and confidence about their future life. It's like I fell in love with Guangyuan and the people there."

Gschwandtl learned the local dialect and practiced Chinese songs in a karaoke lounge with his Guangyuan friends.

"My favorite song is Chinese rock legend Cui Jian's Rock 'n' Roll on the New Long March," Gschwandtl told China Daily. "The stay there, being a bridge between the outside Western world and a remote city in inland China, is one of my best memories in life."

Having finished the school project in Guangyuan, Gschwandtl is continuing his work in the countryside in Deyang and Mianyang, in Sichuan province, in other economic reconstruction areas, including projects in rural carbon trading, micro insurance for farmers and female labor force training.

"Helping people in poor villages to build a new life in the aftermath of the quake has been my life focus in China," said Gschwandtl.

Gschwandtl's Nanying Primary School project was just one of eight school reconstructions in Sichuan financed over three-years by Germany and China in an initiative called Moving Ahead Together.

With the aim of fostering the cultural and economic ties of the two countries, the Chinese-German project has launched several events in Chinese cities since 2007.

It was celebrating a pop music festival in Chongqing on May 12, 2008, when the magnitude 8 earthquake struck, causing the event to be canceled. .

Just five days after the quake, the bilateral collaboration held a charity concert with Chinese and German bands, which raised more than 110 million yuan in donations. All the money was put toward relief and reconstruction in quake-hit areas in Sichuan.

When German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Sichuan one month later he announced German financial and logistical support for the reconstruction of eight schools in Sichuan which had been destroyed by the earthquake.

Most of the school buildings were scheduled to be rebuilt by the beginning of the school year in September 2009. Seven of the schools received financial support from German companies, while the reconstruction of Nanying Primary School in Guangyuan city was directly financed by the German Foreign Ministry.

All the reconstructed buildings in the eight schools were built according to the highest safety standards and designed by well known foreign architects and the country's leading architecture institutes.

"Designed by a Dutch architect, and supervised by GTZ, the new four-floor school building took five months more than normal to be completed," said Li Yi, head of Guangyuan Nanying Primary School.

"The 6.8-million-yuan building, with 15 classrooms, is now the most beautiful in the city and pulled in the crowds when it was topped out," he added.

Hu Qiao, a 10-year-old pupil at the school, said she never imagined that a school building could be "so nice and with many details designed according to our requirements".

"More importantly, I will never be afraid of the classroom collapsing even if a quake strikes again," said Hu, who received all her Grade 3 lessons in tents and mobile cabins.

"What moved me is that the German partners not only provided us with financial aid, but also paid a lot of attention to the care of the students and the environment," said Zhang Kequn, head of Guangyuan Bayi Primary School, which was supported by the Asia-Pacific Committee of German Business.

According to Zhang, the new three-floor school building for 750 students contains a multi-media classroom, a dance hall, a library and a laboratory - facilities he never expected to see in the mountains on the outskirts of Guangyuan.

"The German designers asked the students to draw a picture of the school they dreamed of before the construction project started and then adopted their thoughts and wishes into the design as much as possible," said Zhang.

"They even took into consideration the sustainability of the school in such a poor region. For example, they applied innovative ideas such as a pitched roof and specially-positioned windows allowing natural lighting as well as heat insulation to reduce the use of electricity," he said.

Zhao Aiwu, vice-mayor of Guangyuan, told China Daily that she was more pleased to see friendship develop than the benefits of financial support from the reconstruction projects. "I do appreciate their being scrupulous and paying attention to the environment. We are looking for further support from the German side in more fields, such as education, economic reconstruction and low-carbon development of the city."

According to Zhao, 492 schools out of the total 599 were badly damaged by the quake. It led to the loss of 3.9 billion yuan in the education sector in Guangyuan.

(China Daily November 1, 2010)