When darkness falls, Liu Xiubi brings out simple equipment from her makeshift room to roast mutton shish kebab, a popular snack food, in Guanzhuang Township, Qingchuan County, in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Not far away is the township middle school. Students are having night classes there. When the bell rings, students will come out and surround her snack booth.

"Only when I'm with the children, I can forget all about that," said Liu.

Her "all about that" refers to losing her 15-year-old daughter in the magnitude 8.0 earthquake on May 12. The disaster leveled her Shiba Township home.

"She would be in grade three in middle school if she did not die. She always ranked top in almost all exams and behaved well. I have a second daughter, but I often have to worry about her study."

Liu looks tired. Except for that, she acts the same as other common mothers -- working hard to make a living and chatting about her child's studies.

"Though Liu acts normal, she is suffering great pain under the cover," said Liang Shenglin, an expert with Zhejiang Provincial Psychological Help Team to Sichuan. He talked with the woman for awhile to provide psychological help.

"She keeps on replaying the disastrous earthquake scenes in her mind. When a car drove by, she might take it as an earthquake."

Survivors are haunted by insomnia, depression, anxiety, horror and pain.

"Victims report increasing domestic conflict in families after the quake. They lack trust on things around them," said Wang Yiqiang, head of Zhejiang Psychological Help Team to Sichuan.

They find the victims' pain is going from visible to invisible. For example, they might shed tears at first, but now they just keep it to themselves.

Those who lost family members are recovering with the most difficulty.

About 700 victims are divided into four groups at Menghu (Tiger) Community in Huangshaba resettlement site in Zhuyuan Township in Qingchuan.

"The first, second and third groups have 50 percent victims who lost family members. The fourth has only one family with member loss," said community worker Hou Famin. "Few in the first three groups go out to work as migrant workers. In contrast, most young laborers in the fourth group have gone to cities for temporary jobs."

"Most survivors say they fear further catastrophes and are awaiting them after the earthquake: they might get into typhoons or tsunamis even if they go out of their hometown to work," said Cheng Buqiang, head of the second group in the community.

"Those who stay at the resettlement community mostly are penniless, with no farmland, money or materials to start production with," Hou said. "Another reason they are unwilling to work as migrant workers is worries that they might not get farmland or a house allotted by the government if they were away."

Experts believed three to six months after the earthquake victims might experience peak psychological stress and feel lonely, helpless, depressed or even commit suicide as the initial tension eases after the disaster and public attention might shift to other topics.

The death of a grassroots official, however, drew public attention back to Sichuan again. Dong Yufei, head of agriculture commission and disaster relief office in Beichuan County, committed suicide on October 3 possibly due to psychological pain and work pressure.

He lost his 12-year-old son and overworked for five months after the disaster.

One week after his death, the county required all departments to resume a normal work schedule to ensure two days of rest each week for staff.

Nearly half the 20,000 registered residents in the county's town died in the earthquake, including 466 or a quarter of the grassroots county officials. Only about 10 percent of the families in town were intact with parents and their only child alive, said Jing Dazhong, Beichuan County head.

Further natural disasters hindered the county. Rainstorms and landslides left six dead and 10 missing, destroying newly-built shelters on September 24, Beichuan County statistics show.

"Dong must felt have guilty about persuading victims to move into the shelters," one of his colleague said.

After the quake, locals have a new ritual to greet each other in Beichuan: one asks "how are you" and the other put out fingers to indicate how many family members or relatives he lost.

Most found themselves penniless in the earthquake after years of hard work.

Dong's colleague, Xiao Kun, lost his new bride two days after their wedding ceremony. The 27-year-old had only a coat and 100 yuan (US$14.29) in pocket when excavated from debris.

As with most residents, he could not afford to rent an apartment, which cost 400 yuan (US$57.14) a month, though he is relatively lucky to earn 750 yuan (US$107.14) monthly as a civil servant. He shares a dormitory with others.

Xiao often felt anxious for no reason after the quake. "I can't concentrate on what I'm doing. I feel tired in the daytime, but could not sleep at night."

"You might think the victims are normal, but when we had a little alcohol, they cried badly." Xiao didn't plan to go to hospital for psychological help as he had "no money nor time."

Zhao Qizhou, another colleague of Dong, admitted he had thought of suicide. "We are under great pressure."

Xu Guangxing, a Shanghai Psychology Association expert, said suicides would peak six months after the earthquake.

"Research shows about 20 to 30 percent earthquake victims will suffer depression, anxiety, paranoid and other symptoms. Among them, 12 to 15 percent are vulnerable to suicide."

Xu participated in earthquake relief work in Japan in 1995. He said some Japanese earthquake victims ended their lives in three ways. "One is to cut off from the outside world and die lonely, another is to take extreme ways such as jumping from buildings. The third is to injure others."

Five months after the quake, experts believed it's high time to strengthen psychological help to victims.

"Three groups need psychological help most: those who had psychological disease before the earthquake, those who lost families members in the disaster and those who were deformed in the earthquake," Xu said.

Yang Jianfen, a Beichuan County resident, lost her only daughter in the quake. Her husband then stayed in hospital after his leg was broken by a collapsed shelter in the September 24 landslides.

"It's disasters. You can't explain them. We lost our daughter and only have each other. Patience is all I have in waiting for his recovery and we struggle to make a living together," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 23, 2008)