Liu Daihe, 43, lights a cigarette passed by his cousin Liu Daishu and spreads the mahjong tiles over the table. Puffing smoke into the 20-square-meter temporary house, he settles down to idle away another day with friends and relatives.

It is a typical snapshot on the 11,000-household interim community to the north of Mianzhu, one of the most damaged cities of the May 12 earthquake that left more than 80,000 Chinese dead or missing. Liu and the 40,000 inhabitants are enveloped in an atmosphere of both hope and ennui that contrasts with a clearly felt grief eight months ago.

Demands of life

Before the catastrophe, Liu was a phosphorous miner for many years at Qingping town of Mianzhu. But the mine, one of the local pillar industries, was swallowed by the quake along with Liu's job.

As the breadwinner of the family, Liu looked for jobs elsewhere, but was turned down because of his age. "I'm not competitive on the market. More importantly, I don't have technical skills, except from doing hard labor in the pit."

The assistance is also dwindling. Last year, the government handed out 200 yuan per person a month for eight months and 33.5 kilograms of grain per head for three months, but all the financial and material support ended in January, says Liu. "Nowadays, around 15 percent of the people in the community live on what they had before," his cousin says.

The price of commodities has climbed due to rising transport costs, and Liu and his wife, Chen Mingfang, have to rack their brains to make ends meet.

What worries the couple most is their 14-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, who are studying at secondary school.

Changying, the daughter, will take the national college entrance examination this summer, meaning a lot of money will be needed if she is enrolled into university. This term alone, she paid 2,000-plus yuan for tuition fees and living expenses.

Her brother, Chenglin, pays 9 yuan a day for three meals in the school canteen as part of a boarder scheme.

Liu's mother-in-law, who lives under the same roof, is covered by neither a pension nor the rural cooperative medical care. Liu is relieved that the past winter was mild compared with the previous year.

"Otherwise, she might have caught a severe cold," he says.

In the end, Liu was forced to accept employment in a private mine hundreds of miles away in Yibin, southern Sichuan, where he was paid 80 yuan a day to work from 4:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

The pay was satisfactory, but the toil and loneliness in a strange city were intolerable. The man of few words killed time by playing mahjong with his colleagues, and sometimes, small-time gambling.

Unlike many parts of Sichuan where the natural conditions are harsh, Mianzhu has fewer people moving to big cities like Beijing or Guangzhou for job opportunities.

"Before the quake, Mianzhu was blessed with favorable conditions, with no storms or landslides, and most of us preferred to stay in our hometown," says Liu Daishu.

Adding to their sense of security was the multitude of industries sprawling across the city, such as the national key companies Dongfang Turbine, Lonmon Chemicals and Jiannanchun Distillery, which absorbed a large number of local workers." We are used to the pace of ease here," says Daishu.

Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Resources and Social Security of Mianzhu confirm that around 20,000 people are working outside Sichuan Province, accounting less than one tenth the total labor force.

Before the Spring Festival, Liu returned and worked at another small mine in the adjacent city of Shifang, which was set up by one of his fellow villagers.