Earthquake death toll rises

Today China’s Premier urged survivors to start thinking about the future. They stopped digging for survivors today at the middle school in Dujiangyan because they had already counted for the hundreds of dead students. It seems few of those here had students in the children at the time of the quake, but this place has now become a memorial. One couple is picking through the mess of her shop and when asked if I can talk to her, she gets frustrated. Her husband says some people are using this situation for their own gain, I hope you foreign journalists don’t whitewash the situation like you have the Olympics. His wife grabs him after he says this and takes him away. This woman nearby is willing to talk. She’s a farmer from a nearby mountain village and she says she’s grateful for the aid she’s received. There is a long tradition of giving in China, but until recently it’s tended to be to one’s clan or village or group, but this week is different. Ordinary Chinese have donated money and blood and civilian volunteers have been extremely active. Dujiangyan itself is teeming with volunteers. I stopped to talk with some guys who had loaded up donations from their neighbors and traveled an hour to be here. many of these volunteers still are way of how a foreign journalist might report on this story though.