A year after quake, grief remains, hope regained in China´s Sichuan

An official in town, Zhao Rong was grateful she was kept busy and could not concentrate on her own grief. She joined rescue and relief work and relocated 1,800 townspeople away from a swelling quake lake three weeks after the quake.

To the outsiders, she is still the "iron lady" who works like a horse. She reserves the pains for herself. Every night, she'd crouch on her old king-sized bed, subconsciously making room for her son. "Sometimes he'd climb onto my bed at night, saying he felt cold sleeping alone," said Zhao.

In January, eight months after the quake, she married another quake-widowed official in town. "I told myself that life must go on, that my husband and son would be happy to see me carry on," she said.

Before the remarriage, Zhao burnt all the old family photos. "They are here on my mind," she said, pointing to her head.

In Beichuan alone, several hundred quake widowed got hitched again after the quake. Classified ads posted at local newspapers or down the county streets often stated "quake widowed" alongside the proposers' height, occupation or income level.

"Remarriage is the simplest, but most effective way to reignite hope in these lonely hearts," said An Guangxi, a Shanghai-based photographer who visited Beichuan four times to take snapshots of quake survivors' life. "Many said remarried life was not perfect, but was better than living in the shadow of past miseries."

An's works have been collected into a photo exhibition in Shanghai, entitled "Memories of Life" to mark the first anniversary of the quake.