1、1Pick Yourself Up,Dust Yourself OffWHEN you fall down,otherpeople may try to help you,but you should get up byyourseK,“ said Song Xiangli,owner of a hotpot restaurant in ShuimoTown,Wenchuan County,Aba Tibetanand Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. All of the dozen of tables in her res-taurant are occupied.
2、Songs 81-year-old mother is busy in the kitchen withthe other chefs; and her cousin helpsother waitresses look after the guests. When the deadly earthquake hap-pened on May 12,2008,Song was ather job in Yingxiu Town,the epicenter.Desperately worried about her family,she risked one aftershock after a
3、notherto walk the many kilometers to herhome in Shuimo Town.Fortunately,herparents and her son,a middle schoolstudent in Wenchuan,were safe.Butthe town,home to a population of over2o,ooo Qiang,Tibetan,Hui,and Hanpeople,was seriously damaged; 311 peo-ple died and 3,7ol were injured.The direct economi
4、c lossreached RMB 5.8 billion.Songs family home was destroyed. Now Songs mother helps her at the restaurant,butmother and 2daughter argue frequently.“My morn is a realtreasure.I like to go head to head with her - its a lot offun,“ Song said cheerfully of the new kind of rapport and in-timacy that ha
5、s developed between them since the disaster.After being laid off in 1998,Song and her husband left theirhometown for job opportunities in other areas,and werepreoccupied with making more money.The minute shereunited with her family,Song realized that what they hadgone in search of - economic comfort
6、 - was probably notthe most important ingredient in happiness. Now her new home looks much as it did before the fate-ful disaster.Her neat two-storey house of over 5oo squaremeters keeps the characteristics of traditional local con-structions - an open octagonal terrace in the middle; lintels,window
7、 frames,beams and eaves delicately carved andpainted.The entire place has a quaint and dignified atmo-sphere,as aid building crews restored it in accordance withthe original style.“When we rebuilt the house,a specialistfrom Foshan,Guangdong Province,found it was a typicaltraditional post-and-beam wo
8、oden construction,so he putforward a protective restoration plan,“ Song recalled.“Theyused the original bricks and tiles,doorsand windows,beams and eaves as far aspossible.They reinforced the small oc-tagonal terrace,which was a feature rareto 3northeastern Siehuan Province.Therestoration work was t
9、otally free,“ Songsvoice was till of gratitude. The entire town has seen a revival.Foshan is Shuimo Towns aid partner.Aid workers from the city researchedthe history,geography and ethic mix ofthe community,then decided to rebuildit as a new “ecological town with ethnicQiang features.“ Sixty-three hi
10、gh energy-consuming or polluting factories wererelocated or shut down; tourism willreplace them as the pillar industry of thelocal economy. Meanwhile,Songs restaurant is boom-sing as more tourists make it to theirSichuan hideaway.She used to stroll theold streets early in the morning to keepabreast
11、of the changes.If she stayed athome for several days in a row,she ex-plained,the new shops and new people would suddenly makeher feel disoriented. “A few thousand yuana month is enough for my needs,“Song vows.“People who survived the disaster have learntnot to be greedy.Our lives now are far better than we couldeven imagine before. “
