“…The May 12 quake that flattened towns and villages in southwestern China has unleashed a torrent of fleeing homeless, but also a counter-flow of migrant workers heading home into the backwoods of Sichuan province to search for families…”

By Chris Buckley
Source: Reuters

They come clutching bags with water and biscuits and coats, faces haggard from travel and fear, and yet determined to climb through earthquake-shattered hills that many are still fleeing.

The May 12 quake that flattened towns and villages in southwestern China has unleashed a torrent of fleeing homeless, but also a counter-flow of migrant workers heading home into the backwoods of Sichuan province to search for families.

Beichuan, one county in Sichuan destroyed by the quake, has seen thousands of people every day rushing from hard-grit jobs in distant provinces, often with little more than the clothes they wear, to march for one or two days to their home villages.

Gui Yi, a building worker now living in the far northwestern region of Xinjiang, tottered through Beichuan’s ruins carrying two torn plastic bags holding water, crackers and a jacket.

He was going to search for his aged parents with about 60 yuan (4.38 pounds) left from a six-day trek by bus and train from Xinjiang.

A slight man no more than 5 feet (152 cm) tall, Gui said he was not afraid of the walk through boulders and landslides. But his face, a mix of grimy exhaustion and shock, said otherwise.

“I know it’s dangerous but I’ve walked there before,” Gui said before picking his way over a buckled bridge leading to a cracked tunnel that marked his way home.

“Without going in and looking, I’ll never feel at peace,” he said, his voice cracking with grief for what he might find.

Over several days in Beichuan, this homeward flow has defied guards’ efforts to restrict it. Officials fear the returnees could put more lives at risk. On Tuesday, the whole county seat was closed off after official warnings of fresh tremors.

Each migrant worker who makes it this far is testimony to the powerful family bonds of village China, and to how difficult it is to keep those bonds across a gulf of distance.

Grim News Awaits

Zhuo Cunhong, 26, left her job in a toy factory in Guangdong, in the nation’s far south, and was walking into the hills with her father to look for her missing 5-year-old son and six other kin, including her grandparents who care for the boy.

“There’s been no news from my village. Nothing. So I have to go in,” she said, holding a bag with two bottles of water.

“I always worried about leaving my son so far from me, but how am I supposed to make a living here?”

The scene greeting these searchers in Beichuan is a grim warning of what may have happened to their home villages.

Buildings and cars have been crushed by boulders tossed from the surrounding slopes, buildings that survived stand askew. The pungent odour of corpses is inescapable.

But nobody turns back, said a volunteer who has been driving droves of migrant workers to a checkpoint outside Beichuan on the back of his truck.

“People around here grow up in these villages that the person in the next valley never heard of,” said driver Tan Shiping, who said he had been taking in about 500 returning migrants every day. “Even when they only see their parents and kids once a year, this is still their home.”

Many Chinese migrant workers travel home only once a year, for the traditional Lunar New Year holiday.

Yet there is no certainty that they will find anyone at home this time. Many villagers have been escaping this week, helped by rescuers who have marched in with food and medicine.

Villagers emerge carrying bags of clothes and the possessions that mean most to them — carpentry tools, cooking pots, a wedding portrait, a black-and-white picture of a late mother.

These things will often have been paid for by migrant workers’ money earned in distant places.

Sichuan has nearly 90 million people, many of them poor farmers, and it supplies many of the 100 to 150 million migrant workers who keep China’s factories cheaply humming.

Zhou Wanli was hopeful before he hopped off Tan’s truck to head home. Before leaving a building job in Shanghai, Zhou snatched up some cheap toys for nephews and nieces he hopes to track down.

“This is to make them laugh again,” he said.