Feature: Restless recovery on post-quake Sichuan

The price of commodities has climbed due to rising transport costs, and Liu and his wife, Chen Mingfang, have to rack their brains to make ends meet.

What worries the couple most is their 14-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, who are studying at secondary school.

Changying, the daughter, will take the national college entrance examination this summer, meaning a lot of money will be needed if she is enrolled into university. This term alone, she paid 2,000-plus yuan for tuition fees and living expenses.

Her brother, Chenglin, pays 9 yuan a day for three meals in the school canteen as part of a boarder scheme.

Liu's mother-in-law, who lives under the same roof, is covered by neither a pension nor the rural cooperative medical care. Liu is relieved that the past winter was mild compared with the previous year.

"Otherwise, she might have caught a severe cold," he says.

In the end, Liu was forced to accept employment in a private mine hundreds of miles away in Yibin, southern Sichuan, where he was paid 80 yuan a day to work from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m..