The 46-year-old was working in a building in Beichuan, a city in south-west China, when it was totally flattened by Monday's killer quake, which left at least 50,000 dead.

On Friday, soldiers, police and emergency workers frantically dug through the ruins around him.

Sirens wailed, heavy machinery whined, and the acrid air smelled of smoke, rotting food and chemicals.

Some 5,000 bodies had been pulled from the debris, but rescue workers never gave up hope of finding survivors.

And Mr Peng never lost the will to live. 'Natural disasters cannot be avoided. I had to save myself,' he said.

He had a tool bag tied at his waist and used the only part of his body that he could move - his right arm.

'I first untied my girdle, and used it to tie my injured left arm to my head so as to relieve pain,' he said.

He also tried attracting the attention of rescuers by hitting the collapsed wall over and over again.

Then he started thinking about what to eat and drink.

'I searched my pockets and found only half a pack of cigarettes and a few pieces of paper napkins,' he said.

'I broke the cigarettes into pieces and ate the powder. After the cigarettes were eaten up, I turned to the paper napkins.'

An even more daunting problem was how to quench his thirst.

'I had to drink my urine,' he said. 'I managed to take off one of my shoes and used it to collect my urine.'

He said more than 10 people trapped in the collapsed building around him also survived the initial shock. 'But unfortunately, they died one after another,' he said. 'I had encouraged some of them to drink their urine. But they did not listen.'

By Friday, almost 100 hours had passed. Then came the breakthrough Mr Peng had willed to come. Rescuers pulled him out, dazed but sober.

'They were very excited to see me still alive. So was I, and I cried so loudly,' he told reporters while lying on a stretcher at the Mianyang City Centre Hospital.

Doctors said he suffered bone fractures in his left arm and slight injuries to the legs, but was otherwise in good shape.

Mr Peng was one of at least 33 people pulled out alive from the rubble on Friday, among them at least one child in a collapsed school, according to state media.

Yesterday, the miracles continued.

State media said six more people were rescued. A 69-year-old man was hauled out of the rubble in Beichuan after having been buried for 119 hours.

The rescues defied the warnings of experts that chances of survival were extremely small after 72 hours.

'Giving up is excluded from our dictionary,' Xinhua news agency quoted one rescue worker as saying.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who state media reported was personally leading rescue efforts, earlier said: 'Where there is a beam of hope, we will spare no efforts to save the trapped.'

Indeed, three other survivors - two men and a woman - were rescued along with Mr Peng. They had done what he had told them to do.

'So long as you persist in your belief, you can have one more minute for survival and one more chance of being rescued,' he said.

Xinhua, AFP, AP