At about 1:00 a.m. on July 28, 1976, I dragged my tired body, which had labored for more than 10 hours, back to the surface from the 300-meter-deep shaft of the Fangezhuang coal mine in Tangshan. The prominent feeling was heat and no wind.
Take a shower, eat and then return to the four-story dormitory. Zhang Xinwei, a Tianjin youth in the neighboring room, came to hear the news, and I played a game of chess with him on the bed, unable to keep my eyelids open. Zhang Xinwei asked, "Are you convinced?" I said, "I'm convinced. I said: "convinced." That lie down to sleep ...... did not sleep long, I felt the bed desperately shaking. Initially I thought who is again making a fuss to play chess with me, but soon realized that it is not right, the bed is not only shaking, but also up and down.
No such fuss!
In a haze, I leapt from the bed in the neighboring window to the door with the agility of a miner in distress, and in the darkness I seemed to hear Wang, a Beijing youth in the same room, call out to me.
I hold on to the door frame, barely standing, but then can not take a step, only feel the door shaking, the building is trembling, the ear is unheard of ground sound, behind the window is a rapid flash of ground light ...... catastrophe suddenly, as if the end of the world is coming.
I was close to being dropped several times, thanks to the fact that I have been working underground for a year back to the pillar workers, practiced more than a hundred pounds of brawn in the arm, deadlocked on the door frame. I couldn't fall down, and common sense in coal mining safety told me that falling down was a much larger and more dangerous area of force.
A lot of siding, bricks and other debris fell on me, I could not feel the pain, but the horror, my hair stood up, my brain is almost blank, just reflexively realized: the door is on the top side of the swan, relatively strong ......
The horror is rapidly escalating, testing the human nerves! -- rocking back and forth, swaying from side to side, trembling up and down, lurching erratically ...... Beneath my feet was the dance of the earth, which was frantically releasing energy that had built up over years of slumber.
I want to shout, can't shout; I want to go, can't go; want to laugh can't, want to cry can't cry; can't bear it and can't hide ...... Just when the nerves are about to collapse, the shaking suddenly stopped.
Surrounded by instantaneous silence like a dead ground, followed by the sound of panicked people. I quickly regained the calmness that a level 4 miner in distress should have. With the miner's night vision, I saw the building has been seriously twisted deformation , floorboards tilted to fall, part of the outer wall collapsed ......
I took down a set of Indeed clothes and pants drying on the wire inside the door, which I was newly washed on the first day, and shook the soil on it, and quickly put it on. In the darkness, groped my way downstairs. Someone is saying, "Earthquake, light!" It seemed that they were afraid that heavy footsteps would shake the stairs.
I went down carefully, but I still bumped my calf, which was no longer an injury at the time. I finally got out of the building, and my heart dropped. Fortunately, the Fanjiaozhuang mine dormitory building is newly built, strong, otherwise the collapse of the down we will be buried alive.
The courtyard walls have all collapsed, and the people who came out first on the first two or three floors gathered on the road and talked about it. I suddenly realized that I was very special, everyone was mostly wearing only boxers, only I was clothed and clothed!
Zhang Xinwei quickly found me, shaking all the white meat yelling towards me: "Lili, served or not? This time all of them are convinced!"
Someone next to me chimed in, "That's right, there are so many seventh- and eighth-grade workers, and they can't even see the big kiln (miner's term: the situation underground)!"
I suddenly remembered the need for immediate rescue, and hurriedly asked the people around me, "Is there anyone injured, and is there anyone in the building who hasn't come out?"
Young miners are optimistic by nature, and immediately someone responded: you came out late, the earthquake was still concerned about wearing clothes!
What I think is also true is that several nearby dormitory buildings fortunately did not collapse, the most serious damage is only the collapse of the outer wall, and the building are living after a rigorous physical examination of high school students recruited and inserted into the youth, although we can not say that all the hands of the athletes, but everyone is young and agile and have received a formal education in coal mine safety, calm and self-rescue, mutual rescue in case of danger should not be a problem.
It was less than 4:00 a.m., and the aftershocks of the earth were still hitting us. I looked around and saw no one in the boiler room at the main entrance, then suddenly realized: such a big earthquake, the inevitable water and power outages ...... I quickly walked over and touched the boiler water temperature is still OK, then to the faucet to drink pain. Ah, never so desperately drink water, the next time, I do not know when I can drink clean boiled water! As I drank, I wondered what to do next. In just a few minutes, my stomach was so full that I couldn't swallow any more, and for the next 20 hours or so, I didn't think of water to drink. After leaving the boiler room, I went to a nearby worker's house. Fanjiaozhuang mine's family quarters are mostly bungalows, and very strong, most did not collapse. But more importantly, it is more than 30 kilometers away from the city center, and in the east of the city, otherwise it is difficult to avoid the destruction of the house.
Zhao Yushan, a coal mining district, is my partner in the underground, his family has many siblings, and has already begun to build a shed outside the house. Zhao Yushan said to me: put your suitcase in my place, so as not to find it ......
Leaving Zhao's house, I returned to the front of the single dormitory building, which was already in the morning. The aftershocks were hitting every 20 to 30 minutes, but everyone had changed from initial panic to disbelief.
People are asking each other where the epicenter is. On the road, the wounded kept arriving, all villagers from around the mine, each one grimy and apparently freshly plucked from the rubble. The news we got was that houses were collapsing in all directions, and there was a lot of grief!
What is even more disturbing is: 300 meters deep down the shaft, there are thousands of night shift miners, the earthquake caused by the power outage, will make the pumping machine and lift elevator out of operation, the rapid outpouring of groundwater, can be filled with space is limited to the underground tunnel, the people who can swim will also be drowned!
The young miners were stranded on the roadside in front of the building, with the wilderness and the waterlogged cave-in behind them. Some people are joking with each other: Let's go to the bathhouse and see what's going on, all the people coming out of there are "wannabes". But many others were at a loss for words or what to do.
We don't know where the epicenter is! I don't know the safety of my family and friends! Some people searched everywhere for semiconductor radios, hoping to get relevant news, but to no avail.
While we were at a loss, some "blacks" appeared on the road, and the quickest ones shouted: "The people from the well are coming up!
We went up to inquire about the news, it turned out that the underground vibration is far less violent than upstairs, and each bearing weight 30 tons of steel beams and iron pillars, effectively avoiding large-scale collapse, not many injuries. Underground seven or eight workers abound, these decades of old miners know the labyrinth of underground tunnels like the back of their hands, and each has a general's demeanor, the body of a hundred dangers, stoicism and calmness!
While the power outage prevented the vertical shafts with elevating cages from carrying people, the inclined shafts for ventilation remained open. The old miners led the young miners, we greeted each other, helped each other, tripped through the water, withdrew one after another from each working face, walked dozens of miles down the shaft and returned to the ground from the wind shaft entrance!
Near noon, it was raining and people had nowhere to hide. There is a tall bicycle shed by the roadside, the 3-meter-high columns of which have long since collapsed, leaving only the triangular roof to fall to the ground, with a space of about 1 meter in between. We crouched under the shed, hoping the rain would stop.
In the rain and fog, the road came to two difficult figures, close to find, is my classmate master fruit, carrying his 16-year-old son. The company is 60 years old, his back is hunched, and his son lost his legs in an accident at the mine!
I smashed my fist on my own head: how careless, how did I not think that there are still people who can not climb out of the hospital's dangerous building!
I rushed quickly into the rain and put Master Go's son on my back. "Let's go, I'll take you home."
Master Go was already silent, and at this time he was even more tired and unable to speak. On the contrary, his son's mouth is very sweet, big brother long big brother short said good. I keep answering, heart sour: this brother has no legs, so poor!
Walking in the rain, walked a long way, 20 just out of my back a half a person does not feel tired, just fruit master can not keep up the pace.
The fruit master's "home" is just a collar of kangzhi a few wooden sticks supported by a small shack, which sits seven or eight people. The first thing they said when they saw us coming was, "I can't sit inside anymore!
I've heard of things that dislike sick and wounded relatives, but witnessed it for the first time; would like to lose my temper, but see the shed old old, small, young, strong only women, had to be suppressed; so that everyone to squeeze a little bit, the poor young man put in the mat shed inside ......
In the afternoon, it stopped raining, I found Li Jun and discussed what to do next. He is a year older than me, and we both grew up in Beijing and were inserted in Zunhua County while our families moved to Tianjin.
Then came the definitive news: the city of Tangshan was flat! The houses had all collapsed! The intensity of the quake was even greater than in the East Mining District!
It is certain that the epicenter of the earthquake was in the west. Li Jun and I were immediately nervous, so what about Tianjin, is the quake more powerful? How about our loved ones?
We decided that we would leave for Tianjin in the early hours of tomorrow morning, even though the roads were damaged and bridges were broken, and go, we would visit our loved ones. Tonight to make preparations.
I don't know when, home in the city of Tangshan Zhiqing miners, each and every one of them are no trace, they may have gone home. Only we, the young miners whose homes were outside the city, were a step behind in our return home.
A day without food, Li Jun and I went to the miner's canteen to find food. The cafeteria was in ruins, and the dining hall, which could accommodate several hundred people, had collapsed to the ground.
We each found a dozen cornmeal biscuits, 300 miles back to Tianjin, rely on them to maintain energy!
At about 7 p.m., a large aftershock, second only to the main shock, suddenly erupted, and people sitting on the ground were startled into jumping up and down, as a three-story building dozens of meters away collapsed into a large mound of earth, with smoke and dust rising up into the sky, several times the height of the building!
The tragedy was chilling to the eye.
Night fell, we huddled in less than a meter high under the bike scaffolding, enduring mosquito bites, outside the scaffolding is a miserable wind and rain. We had a hard night's sleep ...... The next day, the day just dawned, Li Jun and I set off. Passed in front of the mine hospital, only to see the soccer field large open space, everywhere is the wounded and cross body. A girl suddenly hissed and cried: "Dad, you just died! Let the rain pour all night ah!" At once, cries rose and fell in the square.
Li Jun, obviously more unable to bear this tragic scene than me, pulled me hard to leave quickly.
On the highway outside the mine, Li Jun and I darted onto a truck. The driver didn't force us to get out of the truck during the special period. We often pickpocket coal trucks in the underground, trucks on the ground, as long as the speed is not too fast, grabbing the back corner of the carriage we can go up.
The car headed toward Tangshan, the road can not be seen intact houses, I and Li Jun mood heavy, silent.
The car traveled to the southeast of the city of Tangshan in the auspicious bridge, across the eastern part of the city of Tangshan Steep River in front of us, a river of polluted black water slowly flowing south, the bridge has collapsed into the water.
The driver followed our advice and drove north along the east side of the river, taking in all the ruins, with only the cement factory standing alone. When the car passed the Tangshan steel factory, there were a few people in white coats busy in the crowd, including a beautiful girl; this is the first batch of medical personnel I found after the earthquake, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of respect in my heart.
The car traveled to the second hospital in Tangshan City turned west, there is an unbroken concrete bridge, we finally crossed the steep river.
Looking at the north of the city in a miserable state, Li Jun changed his mind, to go to the northern suburbs of Fengrun County to visit his sister in the insertion of the troops there, so they got out of the car in Diaoyutai.
I was in the car to continue westward, passing by the northwest well I had lived in the earth company compound, has disappeared in the old days, only to see the neighbor Zhang Fujie's second sister standing outside the yard. Ten years later, as a mobile reporter for China Consumer News, I made a special trip to Tang to cover the post-earthquake reconstruction, but also went to Zhang Fujie's house.
The car was headed toward the airport, and as I got out to head south, two female high school students came across the street, one of them crying to the other saying, "All of our family members are dead, and I'm the only one left!"
These were the first words I heard as I entered downtown Tangshan!
A truck came up behind me and I reached out and peeled up. Inside the wagon, lay a wounded woman in her 20s, covered in dust and pale, looking at me with two big, frightened eyes.
My chest sank, suddenly realized that his image, although only 1.75 meters tall, but the bust is 110, but also full of tired face, the whole of a mangan. I quickly jumped out of the car, said: do not scare the wounded, simply go.
To the south along the West Village, only to see the road on both sides of the side lying in a row of wounded, each with a row of dead bodies, and then in the ruins, there are not injured people in the busy work of what.
People's attire is even more varied, wearing what have, and even men wearing skirts, women around the bed sheet are not rare. The earthquake came suddenly, fleeing for their lives is important, after the collapse of the house from what can be peeled out of what to wear it.
Walking to the swimming pool in Phoenix Hill Park, a pool of fresh water is still there, a middle-aged man is using the pool water to wipe his body. Wow, it's so extravagant, it won't be long before no one in Tangshan has any water to drink, I'm afraid.
I ran along the Workers' Hospital through the Palace of Culture to Xishankou, which is a beautiful little street in Tangshan City, where Japanese-style two-story buildings can be seen from time to time. But at the moment, the former beauty is gone, but only broken purlin wall in the story of the experience of the disaster.
Walking, I was suddenly stunned. A picture I've never heard of, want not dare to think of the absolutely tragic picture into the eyes: a young woman holding a baby, from the first floor window out, was above the falling masonry both crushed to death on the window sill ......
The living often nightmares, the dead mourn a thousand souls!
I moved out of the street with heavy steps to the Xishangkou department store, and suddenly realized that there were 20 to 30 people kneeling in front of the mall, each with something around their necks that they had rummaged through the mall, and a middle-aged man with a shirt around his neck pleaded with the armed militiamen who were guarding them, "My two children have no clothes to wear, and I'm not a robber! " He was answered with heckling.
I left the place at a fast pace, not wanting to see the evil side of humanity.
Traveling to Lunan District, where the disaster was even worse, even broken walls were rarely seen, and there were large piles of broken bricks and tiles everywhere.
Southbound along Fuxing Road, I saw Zhao Guoyan standing on a pile of rubble when I arrived at Liutun. He and I went down the well at the Fangezhuang mine, and he used to be on the same team in Zunhua, where he was married to a beautiful Beijing youth from the same village.
The former sharp-witted Zhao Guoyan also saw me, and reacted only after half a day: "Our family is all gone! I'm the only one left."
These were the last words I remembered as I walked out of downtown Tangshan!
Zhao Guoyan was a few years older than me, and I didn't know how to comfort him. I opened the backpack, there are still about ten biscuits, "you must not have anything to eat, we are half." I said.
Zhao Guoyan insisted on refusing, worrying that I can not go to Tianjin, this time to ask for food have no place to ask. I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to get out of this, but I'm sure I'll be able to get out of it.
Out of the city of Tangshan, I ran along the highway to Fengnan County. On the way, met a man and two women three Tianjin small intellectuals, they asked me to return to the road, so we traveled together. Fonan highway damage than Tangshan, everywhere is cracks, big one meter wide and ten meters long, the car has been difficult to pass. Since I got off the bus in the northwest well of Tangshan, basically no cars have come.
The youths, obviously exhausted, sat down to rest and took out the jams and juices they had stripped from the village store for me; they were too sweet for me to resist, and the biscuits I had brought with me were hard for them to swallow.
I encouraged them: if we walk another 20 miles, around Fengnan County, there will be cars coming from other roads, and we can hitchhike. I knew that taking them with me would make it harder for me to walk to Tianjin.
The wilderness of Fenghuang is as tranquil as it once was, except that the villages we passed were all destroyed by the earthquake, and from time to time we saw groups of people burying corpses.
We had a hard time traveling, and the youths showed resilience beyond their years and genders. When we finally passed Fengnan County, they were so tired that they sat on the side of the road.
A car finally drove up behind us, and we got up to stop it, but none of the cars were willing to stop or even slow down. I said, "There's no need to hide, don't be afraid, there are too many people for the drivers to press." But the youths still didn't dare.
I had to take them onward, and found a section with big cracks, lots of destruction, and tumbling sand everywhere, where cars had to slow down. I said, we have to stop here, or we will have to walk back to Tianjin! The youths nodded.
Waiting for a long time, a truck with a canopy drove up, we got up to stop, the car refused to stop, but has been as slow as walking. Two female Zhiqing in a very fast frequency of Tianjin language begging the driver to let them get on the car, I pushed them: "nagging what, hurry up on, I'm a person in front of the stop." As long as they go up, I'll be fine.
Some people saw the car in the distance and ran here. The soldier who was escorting the car was red-eyed with anxiety and shouted at me, "We're a military vehicle ordered to pull medicine, get out of the way!" It was close to pointing a gun at me.
I guessed that the youths had gotten into the car, and hurriedly ran to the back of the car, but it was only the man who went up, and the two women's hands were grasping at the back of the car's gearboard, and the man was dragging them upward.
Then the military vehicle has begun to accelerate, I do not care about the differences between men and women, each person buttocks on a hand, to push them on the car, and then they also stepped up.
The soldiers escorting the vehicle still wanted us to get off, I glared at the back of the car, two more boys stepped on the car, the car has been quite fast.
Shortly after the car was traveling, it was stopped again, it turned out that the villagers along the road put the wounded across the road, asking for a ride.
The car was stopped and stopped, and the car was packed with people, hot and smelly.
It was hard to get to the town of Lutai, but it was already in the afternoon, and a river ran across the road ahead, and the bridge had long since been broken!
When I heard that some engineers were coming to build a bridge, I put off the idea of swimming across and waited with everyone else. A long line of cars gradually formed on both sides of the river.
It was hot! From time to time, trucks pulling corpses out of the town of Lutai drove past us, emitting a putrid odor. It's also a very powerful place to vibrate!
Waiting until around midnight, the simple bridge was finally passable for bicycles. We piled into our bikes and looked forward to crossing the river.
Soldiers were directing traffic, letting in cars from the other side of the river first, mostly military vehicles, loaded with relief supplies. A light went on in my mind that Tianjin was probably less affected than Tangshan, and that the epicenter was probably already behind us.
At about 2 a.m., our side began to cross the bridge, and the people in the cars breathed a sigh of relief that they could finally go!
A little more than two hours later, the bus arrived in the Hebei district of Tianjin, and most of the people got off. Tianjin citizens on the side of the road gathered around, and an older woman, carrying a pot of thin rice, greeted us, "From Tangshan, have some thin rice!"
I listened to my nose, this day more I hardly ate anything!
The military vehicle continued to move forward, in the vicinity of the municipal party committee, I got out of the car, towards the Tai'an Road 11 my home. At this point it became clear that the destruction of the houses on both sides of the road was much lighter than in Tangshan.
But when I walked into No. 11, my heart clenched again as a two-story building collapsed to the ground in front of the entrance!
My house in the yard at the very end, I ran to see my house just tilted walls, roof slanting ride, has not yet been lying on the frame, the heart just let go. The house is not collapsed, people will not die.
In the playground next to the 59 middle school, I found my family, when it was almost dawn. When my brother saw me, he said, "Alive!" I said, "Alive." Mom brought half a pot of thin rice, I picked up the pot and drank it haphazardly, lying down on the cooler on the ground, "There is something to say tomorrow." And drifted off to sleep.
I hadn't slept in nearly 50 hours!
I woke up around 9am. Several people were waiting for me, and they were eagerly asking me about Tangshan; they all had friends and family there. After all, I was one of the first people to come from the disaster area of Tangshan.
Over the next two days, I was constantly asked by people in the neighborhood about the Tangshan earthquake and the safety of their friends and relatives. I repeatedly said, "More than half of them are alive!"
I settled my family a little, and without repairing my house, I decided to go back to the mine. Highway and railroad passenger and freight cars have been suspended, I inquired about nearby units, found a truck to Tangshan, and embarked on the return journey. Tangshan is getting closer and closer, from a distance, the sky is extraordinarily blue, in the past, the smoke from factories covered in the black hat over Tangshan disappeared. There is only one airplane hovering there, and as you get closer you realize it is spraying.
The car stopped in Lunan District, I turned a corner to the same village of the young Zhiqing Liu Zhongyi home to see, Zhongyi and her sister is a simple shed to pack things. She told me that the two sisters were the only ones left in the family of eight, and that they hadn't died because they had been sent to work in other counties.
I was so sorry that I accompanied them for a while. To this day, I still have the image of her loving mother and beautiful brother in my mind.
Leaving the Liu family, I picked up the car all the way back to the mine, the same day into the earthquake relief work. But a new disaster awaited us - there was no house to live in, our beds were underneath elevated bicycle scaffolding, and at night there were always a dozen mosquitoes under the mosquito net.
The food was even more unhygienic, with two or three flies on almost every square centimeter of food surface, and clean drinking water was out of the question.
Almost everyone was sick, mostly with diarrhea. I couldn't hang on for more than a few days, high fever plus acute dysentery.
I went to the mine hospital's hut to ask for "Dysentery", but what I saw really made me sad. Because too many people are sick, I don't know who suspected that the miners were sick, so they decided to take a stool test on the spot. Only to see the miners to medical treatment lined up, one by one to take off their pants, kneeling on the hospital bed, by the person holding a glass rod poked into the anus to pick up stools.
I was so angry I turned my head and left. I would rather not get my medication or sick pay than be subjected to this double bullying of personality and body!
The rest of the day, I lay in bed, and the once-strong me needed to hold onto something to get up. I simply went on a hunger strike and stopped drinking, and when I pulled out all the dirt in my stomach, my illness would naturally get better, and I was counting on my own resistance.
The Beijing youth, Xiao Wang, brought me a bottle of water. He said, "Don't worry about drinking it, it's the water I filtered from the sand dam I built by the collapsed pit, and I boiled it in my lunch box.
Nine years later, I was admitted as a reporter, and I've been to many places, and I've drunk all kinds of beverages, but none of them are as deep and meaningful as this bottle of water! It's a pity that I don't know where he went afterward. Time has passed 30 years, even his name has been forgotten.
After three days of hunger strike, I felt cured and could stand up and walk slowly without holding anything. I felt transformed into a new person!
People often say: "If you don't die in a disaster, you'll be blessed later. In fact, this "latter blessing" is that people have become strong and will not be destroyed by ordinary difficulties.
The situation is getting better day by day, although I later in the disaster relief work, because of fatigue fell to the left foot fracture, but after all the most difficult time has passed.
Miners used broken bricks to build a wall around the bike shed and spaced it into small rooms of a dozen square meters. Zhang Xinwei put a limp I settled into their small shack, finally have a shelter that can shelter from the wind and rain, make a fire for the winter ......
Tangshan earthquake occurred at 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976, with a magnitude of 7.8, 240,000 people died in the rubble, 160,000 people were seriously injured, and more than 7,000 families were cut off from their homes. More than 7,000 families were cut off from their homes and cigarettes!
Me and a few Beijing and Tianjin youths, fortunate and Tangshan people **** to go to the disaster: struggle to the strength,遣伤病的躯, care for mutual assistance, rain and shine; generous song of sadness, with the same to nirvana (般/木), reborn.