Work to rebuild the counties destroyed by the Wenchuan earthquake is well under way but a survey shows trust in grassroots officials has declined. Hu Yinan reports from Sichuan
Standing among the broken bricks and glass of what was once his home, Shen Jibin's expression was one of fury and confusion when China Daily first met him shortly after the Sichuan earthquake.
The headmaster had been on a six-month exchange program in Zhejiang province when he heard of the disaster on May 12, 2008. He immediately rushed home to Beichuan - the county worst hit by the disaster - and discovered his life in ruins.
His daughter, Tingting, miraculously survived the collapse of Beichuan Middle School but Shen's wife of 16 years, Wang Xiuhong, was not so fortunate. She is among the 17,923 missing people the State Council's Earthquake Rescue and Relief Headquarters is expected to add to the official death toll of 69,227 by next May.
One of the most shocking things exposed by the disaster was the poor construction of school buildings. And while many survivors left or were relocated, Shen was asked to stay behind to be part of a team specifically set up by officials in Mianyang, Beichuan's administering city, to console the parents of students killed in the disaster.
Almost 21 months on, the three-year plan to rebuild areas ravaged by the 8-magnitude earthquake is well under way and, although most projects were started only after the first anniversary of the disaster last May, the rebuilding work is scheduled to be completed ahead of schedule on Sept 10.
The plan includes more than 1,200 townships in the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi, covering an area of 132,596 sq km and a population of roughly 20 million, according to the State Council.
The direct economic cost of the disaster was more than 978 billion yuan ($143 billion), according to a research institute under the ministry of civil affairs, and, as part of the recovery plans, each county affected was twinned with one of 19 provinces or municipalities, which are required to donate at least 1 percent of their annual fiscal revenue towards reconstruction projects until next year.
Beichuan was twinned with Shandong province and, according to Shen, the quality of the reconstruction has overall been ensured by strict supervision.
"The goal immediately after the earthquake was to resume all classes by Aug 20 (2008), so a couple of teachers and I put everything in place and considered our mission accomplished by Aug 16," said Shen, 42, who is now deputy chief auditor of the county's education and sports bureau. "But the Shandong officials said the canteen, which we built with two makeshift houses, wasn't up to scratch. We couldn't resume classes unless it was right. It was a very big deal, so we pulled five all-nighters in a row to build the kitchen and canteen to make sure they were all in line with Shandong's standards."
Shandong is China's third largest provincial economy and its influence on Beichuan is obvious. Roads are wider, luxury stores sit beside dozens of massage and sauna centers, and local businesses are thriving thanks to consumers from across the country, particularly the north. Anchang, a town in nearby Anxian county where Beichuan's government agencies are temporarily based, is almost a carbon copy of Chinese cities along the nation's booming east coast.
However, the rapid changes have also brought difficulties. "There're so many officials and so many people engaged in reconstruction here that property in Anchang has soared in price," said Shen. "I can't afford to rent here, I have to commute from Yongxin township where houses are cheaper."
Despite the government's best efforts, a number of issues with the reconstruction run much deeper than rising property prices.
The National Audit Office in late January said 230 million yuan of reconstruction funds had been misused. The announcement followed a five-month audit carried out by more than 4,500 staff on 72 major projects, 753 new schools and homes in 22 counties.
Problems ranged from departments in charge of highway construction in Gansu using funds earmarked for reconstruction to repay overdue bank loans, to Anxian county in Sichuan inflating losses to get more central government aid. All have since been "corrected", the audit report stated.
However, mounting time pressure and grassroots misconduct has made solving these issues a real challenge.
Sichuan, the province most ravaged by the 2008 disaster, will complete more than 90 percent of its projects this year, said governor Jiang Jufeng. Earlier this month, the provincial government also vowed to finish construction of homes in rural areas before the Spring Festival, which this year falls on Feb 14, and homes in urban areas before May.
Yingxiu township in Wenchuan county, the epicenter of the Sichuan earthquake, is twinned with Dongguan, an economic powerhouse in Guangdong province. Li Jiefeng, the city's chief of construction under the Third Company of China Seventh Engineering Bureau Ltd, said preliminary planning work was delayed by two months but refused to elaborate why.
However, Yingxiu farmers living on subsidies because almost all the arable land was destroyed said they were prevented by local authorities from getting jobs with construction companies. The township has instead relied on migrant workers, mostly from other parts of Sichuan, who have "come and gone in batches" over the past few months amid disputes over unpaid or delayed wages.
"None of us have a contract. We'll be back home by Spring Festival and that'll be it," said Wang Tao, a 21-year-old worker from Liangshan, a Yi autonomous prefecture in southern Sichuan, who was taking a break outside the iconic ruins of Xuankou Middle School.
Residents blamed the labor situation for the delays. "The government promised to move us into new homes in time for the Spring Festival, but now, with the holidays just a few days away, they've barely laid the foundations," said resident Wu Congjin.
Wang Jiyu, chief manager of Dongguan's reconstruction efforts, this month said all projects would be "basically completed" by May 12.
Elsewhere, physical reminders of the tragedy have already been demolished and replaced by lines of residential buildings as survivors look on, anxiously waiting to return home. Most people left their hometowns and are using monthly government subsidies of about 550 yuan to rent in neighboring cities while armies of workers rebuild entire districts, towns and counties.
But although the majority of Sichuan residents have shown admiration for those sweating on building sites across the province, few have been impressed by the performance of local officials, according to a recent survey.
Researchers at the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development asked more than 4,000 households across 26 counties in Sichuan for feedback on the post-earthquake efforts. They discovered that, although 99 percent expressed satisfaction with the central and provincial governments, public trust in township authorities has declined since 2008.
Almost 350 Sichuan officials were found violating laws or Party discipline during earthquake-relief or reconstruction last year, said Ren Junnian, vice-secretary of the provincial discipline inspection commission last week. He insisted reconstruction projects had overall run smoothly.
One official under fire is Jiang Yongfu, Party chief of Yuzixi in Yingxiu, who recently broke his own ban on hostels in a village, which receives many visitors to its earthquake cemetery and has also been earmarked as the site of a future memorial park, a potential major tourist attraction.
"I wanted to open a hostel but (Jiang) would not let me or anybody else do it. He said no one was allowed to do something like that. Then, before we knew it, he opened one himself," said Li Dihong, 38, who runs a mahjong room in the village.
Jiang, who named the hostel after himself, even uses the quilts left by charities for survivors following the disaster.
"All this land belongs to me to the village," Jiang told China Daily. "We're bound to pioneer this effort so that people can follow suit in the future."
The reconstruction of rural homes affects more than 1.4 million families. Regulations state each earthquake survivor should receive 35 sq m of housing in compensation, while the State also vowed to give every household a subsidy of about 20,000 yuan.
But few villagers can even afford 800 yuan per sq m for their new homes and are resorting to taking out bank loans.
Han Yumei, Beichuan resident who lost her husband in the earthquake, has learned how to make Qiang embroidery, a local handicraft, thanks to training offered to survivors. She now earns 800 yuan a month selling her needlework to tourists. Like other rural residents, she still lives in a makeshift home but is expecting to move to a house in May.
"Now that I've got something to do and an income,
I can slowly pay back the money I borrowed to buy the new house and support my kids," said Han, who has twin daughters in elementary school. "You can't live on without hope. For me, those two kids are my biggest hope. I'll raise them so that their dad can rest in peace."
Zou Jiai and her husband are among the few Beichuan natives who are working on construction sites in Yongchang, an entirely new township where the county government will sit from May. Most workers are from elsewhere in the province, while some have come from across China to build Yongchang, which translates as "forever prosperity", a name given to the township by President Hu Jintao.
The earthquake flattened Zou's new home, killing three members of her family and leaving her with a heavy debt.
"My husband and I used to work in Fujian province. We came back after the earthquake," she said. "At first we stayed because we needed to build a new house but we soon discovered the county had lots of construction sites and that jobs were everywhere. We make about 200 yuan a day and we should be able to pay back all our debts in a year or two."
Further north in Qingchuan, Fan Xiulin, 35, said she and her husband had worked away for more than a decade before spending all their savings on a three-story home that was destroyed in the earthquake.
Their new house was completed last spring with help from the local government and workers from Zhejiang province, Qingchuan's twinning partner.
"Their support has been as much material as it has been spiritual. I thank them from the bottom of my heart," she said. "Yes, we may have borrowed about another 60,000 yuan in the process, but my husband and I are still young. We can afford to start all over again."

Video & Editor: Yu Chenkang