Although the rescue work is continuing and survivors still shudder at the memory of the deadly quake last week, people in the southwestern province of Sichuan are trying to return to life as normal.

Classes in a tent

"It has been raining for hours, raindrops pattering on the roof..."

The sound of a class reciting was heard again, a week and a half after the catastrophe, when nearly 700 students in Mianyang resumed classes in a tent set up in a stadium.

The makeshift "Love Tent School" was separated from the residential area of the quake survivors' community by a cloth "wall". Like many of the temporary structures springing up in the devastated region, the school is made of waterproof cloth and scaffolding.

Red-eyed Chen Dinghui forced herself not to cry when students recited the line, "The spring rain knocked on the sheet iron roof."

Her five-member family was reduced to two by the quake, as only she and her 13-year-old son Mu Guiquan survived. Mu was in class two, grade six at the tent school.

"Accompanied by so many teachers and classmates, he won't feel lonely and is likely to shake off the nightmare soon," she said.

Mu Guiquan just had a class with Dong Yaolin, a medical worker from Tangshan in the northern Hebei Province, where a massive earthquake 32 years ago killed at least 240,000.

"At that time, the rescue force was weaker and more people lost their lives," Dong said. "But today, Tangshan is a beautiful city."

On the move again

The migrant who rushed back home after the quake was ready to return to her work site, bringing her mother.

Li Jiahui, 41, lived in Shilong Village, Beichuan, and left home five years ago with her husband and son to work in Zhejiang.

She rushed back after the earthquake, finding her 73-year-old mother in a shelter. Her father was dead.

After the funeral, Li was eager to go back to work. "It is impossible for us to live without working in cities," she said.

Her family had five mu (about 0.3 hectares) of land, growing corn and potatoes, before the area was converted to forest. Since then, they have hardly any income apart from the 1,100-yuan subsidy from the local government.

With more than 80 million people, Sichuan is one of China's major sources of domestic migrant workers.

In Li's village, half of the more than 400 people have migrated to work in cities, leaving only the elderly and children.

Her husband was a carpenter, while she and her son did chores on a construction site, netting more than 10,000 yuan a year.

"We will rent a new house and live with my mother in Zhejiang," she said. By removing quake survivors from the stricken region, "we can help ease the government's burden," added Li.

Back to the field

Wiping off tears for his son, who was buried after the quake, Wang Defu has harvested most of the wheat on his field and started to plant rice.

"The government sent us a tent and food, but we couldn't just sit and cry for help," said the man in Shihe Village, Mianzhu. "Life goes on. If the farm work is delayed, life in the next half of the year would be more bitter."

The quake severed power supplies to 690,000 households out of 940,000 in Deyang.

To get the water pumps working again, Zeng Deping from the local electricity station worked overnight on Tuesday to fix power supply lines.

Most of the power lines have been re-connected. About 1.71 million households in Sichuan, or 88.4 percent of those that experienced power cuts after earthquake, have regained access to power.

Water supply has also resumed in all the county seats affected in the earthquake, except the seats of Wenchuan and Beichuan.

"Now we feel relieved, without having to worry about irrigation," Wang said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2008)