Liu Renqin in his sixties has reopened his decade-old gravy store, with the savory smell often attracting queues of buyers from his temporary-house community.

In his view, the store is less of business purpose, but more a link to the calm and happy life before last May's devastating earthquake that left more than 80,000 people dead or missing.

The original store, which Liu had run for more than ten years in Beichuan, one of the hardest-hit counties, was toppled, and half of his families, including a son, a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter, died in the catastrophe.

Though turning more silent, Liu has gradually been adapted to the life in the new community, the largest prefab neighborhood in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province. The neighborhood is home to more than 10,000 fellow residents from Beichuan.

"We have to live on," says Liu. He even plans a tour to Beijing within a couple of years if the gravy store can help him save enough money, since he has dreamed of visiting the national capital.

Wen Huarong, 40, who lost both her son and mother in the quake, now works as a volunteer in the community and devotes most of her energy taking care of the preschool children in the neighborhood.

"It touches me with a sense of family," Wen says. "People who are still alive need some sort of dedication to life and work to make them more courageous."

But some are still struggling for the future.

Liu Daihe, 43, finds it difficult to find a stable job after the phosphorous mine at Qingping Town of Mianzhu, another hard-damaged city, was gulped by the quake. He had worked for the mine for years and was the breadwinner of his family.

He looked for jobs elsewhere, but was turned down for his age. "I'm not competitive on the market. In addition, I don't have technical skills. I can only do hard labor in the pit."

Liu had to travel hundreds of miles to Yibin in southern Sichuan to work at a private mine, where he was paid 80 yuan (US$11.8) a day working from 4:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

Before the Spring Festival, Liu came back and placed himself at a small mine in the adjacent city of Shifang, which was set up by one of his fellow villagers. The pay is 50 yuan on a daily basis.

Facing the tough situation, local governments have listed employment as the top priority, hosting a series of job fairs and offering training programs to help job seekers improve their technical skills.

By the end of last year, more than 1.2 million laborers in quake-hit areas got re-employed. In Mianzhu alone, the local labor bureau reached out to offer more than 18,000 public-welfare posts with modest earnings, such as guarding warehouses or sweeping streets.

Jiangsu, which is responsible for the direct assistance to Mianzhu, offered 50,000 jobs at five large-scale job fairs.

If jobs are regarded as the top priority, the second comes housing. Ma Qianguo, chief of the Communist Party committee of Luobozhai village in Beichuan, is so busy with house rebuilding that he has slept for only three to four hours a day for months.

He hopes that all the villagers can move into new houses before May 12. That will be the best way to commemorate the dead at the quake's first anniversary, he says.

"The foundations of the new houses are as solid as bridge piers," Ma says. "They can to stand against even a magnitude-10 quake."

"While building our new village, we are also establishing our new life goals," he says.

In Longxi village, Wenchuan County, the quake epicenter, 37-year-old Chen Shixue keeps his temporary house warm through the winter with an electric heater.

Chen said the government has offered construction materials and each family 2,000 yuan (US$290) to help build the wind and rain-proof houses made of plastic cloth and wood boards.

Among the 96 families in the village, 90 lost their homes in the quake. They built temporary houses to live through the winter as their new permanent houses have not been completed.

As it's getting warmer, they have packed away the quilts and the electric carpet given by the local government, says Chen.

By the end of January, 560,000 rural households in Sichuan, almost half of the total number, had completed building their new permanent houses.

"Spring is coming. There are always new hopes," Chen says.

(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2009)