Enduring Aftershock

“I would have avoided the disaster if I was in Kunming at the time，”sighs Fu Pingsheng. He props up his body with his arms and inches towards a wheelchair beside his bed at his home in a Tangshan rehabilitation village. Lacking legs that were amputated， he lifts his withered thighs into the wheelchair. The entire process takes nearly two minutes， and Fu has repeated such struggles， becoming exhausted accomplishing the simplest of tasks， almost every day for four decades.

The “disaster” to which Fu refers is the Tangshan earthquake. At 3：42 a.m. on July 28， 1976， a catastrophic earthquake obliterated the city in northern China’s Hebei Province， claiming a total of 242，769 lives and destroying thousands of buildings. Forty years later， the scars of the disaster remain fresh for the survivors.

Life in Rehabilitation Village

Fu， then 21， was working as an “educated youth” in the countryside of Tangshan when the earthquake struck. He once dreamed of becoming a musician. “I’ve liked playing musical instruments since childhood，” he reveals. “At 14， I was admitted to a military art troupe in Kunming， Yunnan Province. Considering my young age， my parents forbade my joining， and it became a lifelong regret.”

July 28， 1976 marked an apocalyptic day in the memories of Fu and other survivors of the Tangshan earthquake. Fu had just fallen asleep when the ground began quivering. In a few seconds， the house in which he was living collapsed， and a gigantic concrete brick dropped on his legs.

After being rescued from the debris， Fu’s two legs were amputated below the thigh. His parents were both killed in the quake. Fu was sent to the Shijiazhuang Fourth Hospital for further treatment. Three years and eight months later， he returned to Tangshan to receive rehabilitation at a local hospital for paraplegic patients.

Fu didn’t give up his musical dream. He played the erhu （a traditional stringed instrument） every day to entertain himself and other patients in the hospital. One of his fans， Liu Yuhua， eventually became his wife.

“We often ate dinner and did laundry together，” Fu recalls. “Once， she was severely scalded while bathing because of lack of feeling in her lower limbs. I began to help her as much as I could. We eventually fell in love and got married.”

After the rehabilitation village was established in 1992， Fu and his wife moved there. Without hope for children， they got a dog named “Pudding.” The barking puppy injected a sense of vitality into their peaceful lives.

The rehabilitation village is hidden in a small， nondescript street behind Tangshan People’s Hospital， featuring a variety of accessible facilities designed to offer convenience to the disabled. When it opened， 26 disaster-affected households moved in. All of them were blended families after the earthquake and were turning the page on a hopeful new chapter of their lives. As famous writer Guan Renshan， also a survivor of the Tangshan earthquake， wrote： “The earthquake shook the ground abruptly， and many families were broken up and destroyed sorrowfully. Even when survivors formed new families， they could still never escape the shadow of the disaster… They support and console each other in times of distress in a bid to find a new foothold for their lives and heal their wounds with humanity and love.”

The deadly earthquake left 3，817 people paraplegic after amputation. An expert from the World Health Organization had predicted that none of them would live for more than 15 years. It has been four decades after the disaster， and about 1，000 paraplegic Tangshan survivors are still alive. Of them， 34 dwell in the rehabilitation village.

Wang Xiaohui， 58， and her husband both suffer from paraplegia and have lived in the rehabilitation village together for 14 years. When the earthquake struck， 18-year-old Wang was hitting the best years of her life. It took years for her to accept the reality that she lost her legs. At first， she felt ashamed and seldom went out. Her psychological trauma gradually healed with the passage of time.

“I returned to Tangshan after receiving medical treatment in Nantong for six months，” she recalls. “I once dreamed of walking again and worked hard on rehabilitation exercises. Gradually， I accepted the reality. After all， my family survived the earthquake， and our house didn’t collapse. I should feel lucky that the disaster didn’t take everything away from me.”

Born in 1976

Fan Zhenling never celebrates her birthday. She was born 19 days before the Tangshan earthquake. The disaster took the lives of her three family members： her grandparents and her then 15-year-old aunt. Her birthday always reminds her of her lost family.

Many like Fan were born in 1976 and survived the disaster. Many of their names contain the word “Zhen” （literally， “earthquake”）. For them， the earthquake has become a lifelong label.

When she went away to college， Fan was frequently asked by classmates whether she came from downtown Tangshan and how many family members she had lost in the earthquake. She spilled everything she knew about the disaster once， hoping that they would never ask again. However， such questions continued bothering her for years.

Forty years have passed since the earthquake. Fan， now in her 40s， has no direct memory of the disaster. She has stopped asking her parents details about the quake and doesn’t want to share her stories with her own children.

Despite the lack of “Zhen” in his name， Wang Yang is another survivor of Tangshan earthquake born in 1976. “When outlanders asked me about the earthquake， I told them how I was rescued，” he says. He lost three members of his family， including his elder brother who was then five years old， his grandfather， and his aunt.

The 2010 feature film based on the Tangshan earthquake， Aftershock， received a mixed response from survivors born in 1976： Some couldn’t wait to watch the movie， in hopes of better visualizing everything they were told about the earthquake， while others refused to watch it because they didn’t want to face the sorrowful scenes that had plagued their whole lives. Fan fit the former， and Wang the latter.

Wang once thought that he had totally recovered from the disaster. “The film reminded me of the sorrow，” he explains.“The pain remains fresh even for survivors with no direct memory of the earthquake. Such a feeling is fueled by the familial void that can never be forgotten or washed away by time.”