Chen Liangyu went back to his hometown, the flattened epicenter of Yingxiu, from which he had escaped on the third day after the May 12 earthquake, for a trip "back to the past."

The 39-year-old businessman used to run a fabric shop in Yingxiu Town before the deadly quake. Through the shop, his wife and himself could earn 5,000 yuan (US$714) to 6,000 yuan every month. In another business growing kiwi fruit on a 0.4-ha piece of land, once the orchid began to yield fruits, it was expected to add 40,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan to their annual income.

However, the deadly earthquake, which had claimed at least 69,142 lives as of Monday, proved a u-turn in Chen's life and thrust him back into poverty. In the quake, his 12-year-old daughter was buried under the debris of her middle school. Her nine-year-old sister managed a narrow escape as she was attending physical education in the schoolyard when the tremor happened. Frequent aftershocks had compelled Chen's family to leave their hometown, with their home and shop devastated and orchard buried by the quake-triggered landslides.

"I want to go back and stand up where I fell," said Chen, who had only 203 yuan left after the quake. "If there's no way out, I will find a temporary job for the time being," he added, cherishing the dream of re-opening a shop of his own.

Active in quake relief

With rural residents accounting for nearly 70 percent of its total population, Sichuan, which was ravaged by the quake, has registered more than 2 million private business owners who had contributed more than half of the province's GDP in 2007. Though no economic loss data is available now, Chen is far from unique among private businesses owners in Sichuan.

According to Wang Guobin, head of the provincial private business association, small private businesses tended to suffer bigger losses since most of them, with difficult access to bank loans, had chosen to invest in fixed assets and not to keep much working capital and deposits.

Given their own misfortune, the small private business owners, often nicknamed "petty bosses," had joined the arduous quake relief vigorously.

Shuai Lan, who had operated a bakery and a hotpot restaurant in Jiangyou, lost more than 1.8 million yuan in the earthquake. But at the very afternoon when the tremor occurred, she took rice and flour out of her business to cook porridge for the survivors.

At a temporary resettlement station in Jiannan Town of Deyang, 13 self-employed individuals built an improvised barbershop and gave a haircut to more than 500 people every day.

In downtown Deyang, shopkeepers kept doing business or hawking to provide fresh meat, fruits, vegetables and eggs for survivors in an intermittent way, with exposure to risks of more aftershocks.

In the fourth week after the quake, private businesses from outside Sichuan began to offer jobs to survivors.

Two processing enterprises from Shishi in the eastern Fujian Province, offered 100 jobs for survivors from Sichuan, even for a whole family of three, and took the responsibility to find schools for the employees' children.

Chen Anpei, head of the Mianyang private business association, said China's private businesses were growing with the diligent entrepreneur spirit and maturing mentality of citizenship.

Besides those "petty bosses," many larger disaster-stricken private businesses in Sichuan had spared no efforts to participate in the quake relief.

A tourism company donated more than 4.05 million yuan in cash and goods after losing more than 500 million yuan in the quake. New Hope Group, a leading feedstuff supplier, shipped its first offer of hams, drinking water, biscuits and milk to the quake-battered areas in the wee hours of the second day upon the catastrophe.

Private business owners in eye of public

China's per-capita GDP has reached US$2,000, with regional disparity and gaps between the rich and the poor and between different trades widening. The general public began to pay more attention to the legitimacy of private wealth accumulation and to the behavior of the rich. There was also a dark side to the post-quake days. Some private businesses took the chance to jack up prices and some others sold shoddy goods and counterfeits.

Wang Guobin said China had a tradition to consider "petty bosses" only caring about their own interests and doing little for public benefit. But after the quake, most of the private businesses have been better aware of their social accountability, with their creditworthiness improving.

Chen Anpei, who slept for only five hours in each day after the quake, said the quake was a tribulation through which China's private businesses would become stronger.

"Our tears have dried. We must stand up out of the disaster and start up business again."

He suggested the central government encourage disaster-stricken private businesses to restore operation with certain preferential policies. He said this would somehow alleviate the government's burden in quake relief.

(Xinhua News Agency June 11, 2008)