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HEARTFELT THANKS: Mr Zhong thanks SCDF's Major Bob Tan for helping to extricate his sister's body in Hongbai township in Sichuan yesterday.
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HONGBAI TOWNSHIP - MR XIAO Zhigang finally buried his mother yesterday, after six days of anxious waiting, not knowing whether she was alive or dead.
Last Monday afternoon, his mother, Madam Zhong Xianqiong, 46, was at home watching television on her sofa when a powerful earthquake rocked Hongbai township and large parts of south-western Sichuan province.
Mr Xiao, 22, a mine worker, was in a neighbouring town and had called her 20 minutes before the quake. He arrived back later that night to find his home on the second floor of a five-storey building reduced to rubble and his mother nowhere to be found.
Yesterday morning, Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) rescuers extricated Madam Zhong's badly decomposed body after almost two days of searching through a mountain of unstable debris.
The 55-member team, which includes 33 servicemen from the elite Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (Dart), had arrived in battered Hongbai Township early on Saturday to assist Chinese rescuers in their ongoing search and rescue efforts following last Monday's giant quake.
Working with information provided by the local authorities, the team has recovered the bodies of five victims in two days.
At the behest of Madam Zhong's younger brother, Mr Zhong Xianshu, 43, who approached them during their recce of the town, the team spent seven hours manually digging through rubble on Saturday, and another two hours of searching with an excavator yesterday morning.
Just before 11am, the excavator extricated a mangled sofa from the wreckage. Moments later, a black handbag was found.
Mr Xiao and Mr Zhong were waiting at the scene and identified both as belonging to their relative.
Soon, the rescuers spotted Madam Zhong's body and quickly freed it from its concrete prison.
On a stretcher, they carried the body from the rubble, and walked a short distance to a mass burial ground for Hongbai's quake victims set on a hillside.
Already, 190 of the around 400 freshly-dug graves have been filled. Many among the dead are students who were crushed when their school buildings caved in.
The quake took a heavy toll on remote mountain communities in Sichuan including Hongbai.
Madam Zhong, the second eldest of four siblings, is among the estimated 1,200 of Hongbai's 6,000 inhabitants killed.
China has estimated the total death toll could top 50,000. President Hu Jintao yesterday thanked the international community for coming to China's aid.
Judging from the spot her body was found, Madam Zhong, who ran a small eatery near her home, had run out onto the corridor outside her flat but was hit on her head by a falling beam, said Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Ng, 40, commander of the SCDF contingent.
Rescue teams are usually not required to assist with transporting bodies for burial, but to have left the grieving family alone would have been irresponsible, Lt-Col Ng told The Straits Times.
'Even though we have not dug out any survivors so far, we will still try our best to go the extra mile to assist family members and the local authorities. The least we can do is to make sure people are properly laid to rest,' he said.
And they certainly went the distance. Before laying Madam Zhong's body into the ground, three rescuers got down on their hands, knees and bellies to dislodge a big rock stuck in the plot.
It took them more than 15 minutes, with hoes and shovels, to remove it before lowering the body in. Chinese people believe the dead should have a comfortable resting place. The men then left to give the family some privacy.
At her grave, Madam Zhong's siblings, their families and her only son knelt and conducted simple burial rites. They lit candles, burned incense and joss paper. Fire crackers were set off, a local custom practised by people in the village.
After many days of holding their emotions in check, at last the family let their grief show.
'Elder sister! We have finally found you. Rescuers came all the way from Singapore and helped to find you. Be at rest now,' said Mr Zhong Xianshu in between sobs. Mr Xiao was too distraught to speak. He kowtowed three times before his mother's grave.
His voice trembling, Mr Zhong added: 'Do not worry, elder sister. We will come and see you often here. You will never be lonely.'
Later in the day, Mr Zhong and his nephew, along with a few other relatives returned to the SCDF base camp to thank the rescuers for recovering their loved one.
'I am grateful to you for risking your lives and putting in such efforts to find my sister even though there was little chance of her being alive,' Mr Zhong said, shaking hands with the team's media officer Major Bob Tan. Lt-Col Ng was out leading another search at the time.
Mr Zhong added, with a smile: 'There is a Chinese saying that good people will have peace all their lives. And you are good people.'
tracyq@sph.com.sg
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