Peng Hao refused to change into other clothes, although the outfit his parents had bought him smelled after a sweating week of horror, heartbreak and despair.
The 11-year-old had only his shorts on after he shook off an old blanket and knelt down on Monday to mourn his parents, both of whom were confirmed dead in the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked their home province of Sichuan last Monday.
His aunt had washed his clothes, which were still wet on a make-do hanger outside their tent.
Tears rolled down Peng's cheeks as he knelt and mourned, desperately choking back his wails. Around him were thousands of others whose homes were destroyed in the quake.
Their home, Anxian County in the city of Mianyang, was one of the hardest-hit areas.
At 2:28 pm, exactly a week after last Monday's disaster, they joined 1.3 billion Chinese to observe three minutes of silence in memory of at least 34,000 dead, including nearly 12,000 in Mianyang.
In those three minutes, the whole nation -- from the northernmost province of Heilongjiang to southern Hainan Island, from the Tibet plateau in the west to the eastern coast -- came toa stop, with horns and sirens wailing, financial markets suspended, to mourn the dead.
President Hu Jintao, former president Jiang Zemin and other top officials including Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang, observed the three-minute silent tribute in Beijing.
Vice-Premier Li Keqiang mourned from the ruins of a hotel in Beichuan, the hardest-hit county where at least 7,000 were confirmed dead.
SOMBER CHINA MOURNS QUAKE DEAD
Monday was a black-letter day for the Chinese, with national flags flying at half-staff and black and white dominating all newspapers and major websites.
"May this moment (of the quake) be inscribed forever in our memory," said white Chinese characters in a black box at the top of the homepage of sohu.com.
Many websites closed their entertainment channels and replaced ads with online mourning notices and calls for donations to the quake-hit areas. As of 1 p.m. on Monday, China had received 10.834billion yuan (1.55 billion U.S. dollars) in cash and goods from domestic and foreign donors.
For three days starting on Monday, cinemas, theaters, karaoke rooms and all other public entertainment facilities are closed. Even the Olympic torch relay, which was high on the Chinese agenda this year, was suspended for three days and all the torchbearers in blue and white outfits stood in silence to mourn the quake dead from a site in Ningbo, a port city on the eastern coast.
In Tian'anmen Square in the heart of Beijing, thousands of mourners refused to be overwhelmed with grief. At the end of the three-minute ritual, the crowd shouted "Go, go, China; Go, go, Sichuan", "Be brave, be strong," while waving their arms or a tiny five-star Chinese flag.
School children and preschoolers made paper flowers and storks, a bird the Chinese believe enjoys a long life. Every 1,000 paper storks are supposed to help a dream come true.
Survivors of the 1976 Tangshan quake joined Monday's mourning.
Pian Erlan, 66, cried as she remembered her husband, one of some 240,000 people who died in the 1976 quake. She held a cardboard sign that read: "I'm here to see you off. May all the victims in Sichuan rest in peace with the 240,000 people who died 32 years ago."
Many Tibetans stood still to mourn the dead in a square in front of the Potala Palace. "There's little we can do when such disasters happen," said Cezhen, a 72-year-old pilgrim. "Each day, we pray: for the salvation of the dead and blessings for the living."
In the Special Administration Regions (SAR) of Hong Kong and Macao, the Chinese national flag and the SAR flags were all lowered to half staff. Residents in both SARs stood in silence from 2:28 p.m. to 2:31 p.m., and other activities were performed similar to those in the mainland.
CHINA'S WOE FELT AROUND THE GLOBE
The embassies of Great Britain, the United States and Japan also had their national flags at half staff to show respect for the dead.
National leaders from Vietnam, Napel, Mauritius and Finland sent messages of condolence.
In a candlelight gathering in London, under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Chinese people gathered to lament their compatriots.
A man from Yemen who called himself Naif said he shed tears watching the quake news. "I will recite the Koran for the deceased during the three-day national mourning," he said.
Zaid Ali, also from Yemen, who is pursuing a master's degree in computer science at Hunan University in south China, said he went to a local mosque with more than 100 others to pray for the dead.
"According to custom in Yemen, we offer such special prayers when our relatives pass away."
RESPECT FOR DEAD, CARE FOR LIVING
The national mourning was proposed by Ge Jianxiong, a history professor in Shanghai, in an article carried in the Nanfang Daily on Friday.
But even if he hadn't proposed it, Ge said, the government would have done the same. "It shows respect for the dead and care for the living by the government and people," he told Xinhua.
The Chinese believe that the deceased bid a formal farewell to their family on the seventh day after their deaths. A proper memorial service on that day is believed to mean a better afterlife for the dead.
Large-scale national mourning is rare in China; the last time such an occurrence took place was after the September 1976 death of Mao Zedong, founder of the New China.
"Such large-scale activities nationwide for victims in Sichuan mirror the growth of a civil society," said famous writer Zhang Kangkang, "the activities reflect an enhanced awareness of ordinary people, as a result of great changes during the three decades since reform and opening-up."
Wang Baofeng, a teacher in Beijing, said that the touching stories during rescue work in the quake zone, showed the unity and social responsibility of the Chinese nation. "The deeply rooted humanity in Chinese culture is the reason why the Chinese civilization could persist for 5,000 years," she said.
Qian Gang, who spent 10 years interviewing survivors from the Tangshan quake, saw the mourning as "a very wise decision of the government".
The mourning impressed foreigners as well.
"It's terrific that China has taken it seriously," said Andrew McEwen, a British author who retraced the Long March in 2002.
He said the Chinese people, who were saddened by the quake deaths, would need the national mourning to vent their grief.
McEwen also praised China for "opening its door to foreign rescue teams". "It's a big step forward," he said.
Rescue work continued into the seventh day, after about 36,563 people had been pulled from the debris.
The hope of the nation was fueled by two miracles on Monday, when 61-year-old Li Mingcui in Beichuan County and 53-year-old Wang Fazhen in Mianzhu were pulled out of debris. Wang later succumbed to her injuries.
More than 100,000 soldiers and rescuers, including those from Russia, Japan, Singapore and the Republic of Korea, are still battling to search for buried survivors in the quake zones.
"Mourning doesn't mean an ending," said Qian Gang. "Hope still exists."
In his book, Qian told the true story of a woman who drank her own urine to sustain herself for 13 days in the ruins of the Tangshan quake before she was rescued.
(With acknowledgement to Xinhua bureaus in all Chinese provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, as well Hong Kong and Macao)
Source: Xinhua
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