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By Rong Jiaojiao, Agence France-Presse
BEIJING: She held hands of her mum and dad on
the way to kindergarten, with no idea that she would soon lose her
parents to the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Beichuan County in
China’s southwest Sichuan Province on May 12.
Shielded by the bodies of her parents,
3-year-old Song Xinyi survived the catastrophe that claimed more
than 50,000 lives and left 5 million homeless.
In hospital, one of her legs was amputated.
Lying at Mianyang No. 3 Hospital, the little girl screams “I want
Dad and Mum” every time she wakes up. Whenever she sees a woman,
she calls her “Mum” and every man “Dad.”
The number of quake orphans like Song Xinyi
could reach 4,000 with 70confirmed so far, according to the Bureau
of Civil Affairs of Sichuan Province.
Reuniting families
Local officials are scrambling to reunite
children with their missing families. Newspapers and television
stations have run children’s photos and names, asking the public
for help. Posters with similar information have been posted at the
relief camps.
The Civil Affairs Ministry has announced that
each confirmed orphan would have a 600-yuan (86 U.S. dollars)
allowance per month for basic living expenses over the next three
months and they would be taken care of by welfare organizations.
The central government will put the orphans
through college if they pass the entry exams. As for those not
enrolled in college, the government will pay their tuition for their
vocational schools, and help them get jobs on graduation.
Meanwhile, more than 300 professional
psychologists sent by the Ministry of Health and other institutions
are working in the quake zone in trauma counseling.
Dr. Shi Kan, fellow researcher with the
Institute of Psychology at Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),
believes timely psychological intervention can help reduce the
incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among orphans.
He notes that 23 percent of the 4,200 orphans
suffered PTSD after the 7.8 magnitude Tangshan quake in 1976, which
killed more than 240,000 people in Tangshan, Hebei Province.
“I think all of the children will have
psychological problems. The smaller children can’t even verbalize
their feelings. They have a look of terror when you mention the
earthquake. They just start weeping,” he says.
Dang Yuxin, 32, who lost her parents when she
was six months old during the Tangshan quake, came to Mianyang to
comfort orphans and tell of her own experiences.
Loss of hope and confidence
“It is not the end of the world when you lose
your parents. More horrifying is that you lose hope and confidence
in later life,” she says.
An orphan himself of Tangshan quake, Zhang Youlu
says, “We can feel those children’s pain better than anyone
else. We want to tell them to be strong and brave, because
everything will be all right finally.” Zhang, now a bookshop owner
in the city, initiated the rally of Tangshan orphans to mourn the
dead and donate for the quake-hit areas.
Zhang Xiangqing, president of a steel company in
Tianjin, who was also orphaned by the Tanshan quake, has donated 100
million yuan ($14 million) to disaster relief in Sichuan. “I hope
the money will help build new homes and schools that will withstand
earthquakes,” he says.
Nationwide, thousands of Chinese have swamped
online forums and phoned the hotlines of local civil affairs bureaus
with offers to take in children orphaned in the quake when the
government said it was drafting plans for adoptions.
Who will I live with?
For 17-year-old He Junli, a student at Beichuan
Middle School, however, Mianyang stadium will be her home for quite
some time. She lost her parents and all her relatives to the quake.
She was relocated here with other survivors.
“I can’t sleep. I keep asking myself:
‘Where will I study in the future? Who will I live with?” she
says. Her school collapsed and half of her schoolmates died during
the quake.
“Children’s mental scars most likely will
last for a long time. They may nod and agree when you tell them to
be strong, but they are very hurt inside. They have lost their
parents, lost everything in a flash,” says Shi Kan, of the CAS.
Su Youpo, a post-quake reconstruction
specialist, says most quake orphans preferred a special school or
institution to being adopted based on his research in Tangshan quake
orphans for decades.
“Children who live in foster families always
feel uneasy. They think they owe a great deal to their foster
parents. When staying in an institution, however, all the children
are equal and can support each other,” he explains.
Zhou Jie, 39, who lost parents at the age of
seven during the Tangshan quake, still remembers living with her
aunt and uncle in the south. “In fact, they were very nice to me,
though they have three children themselves. But somehow I always
felt like an outsider.”
Adopting quake orphans
“A special institution for these children,
preferably in their home province, would help them feel closer to
their dead parents and remind them that they are not alone,” says
Dong Yuguo, who served as president of Yuhong School, a
government-run school that sheltered 148 Tangshan quake orphans in
Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province.
For those who want to adopt quake orphans, Zhang
Kan, head of the Institute of Psychology at the CAS, suggests they
need more than just passion and financial security.
“A sense of responsibility and parenting
skills are crucial to help quake orphans step out of shadows as
fostering parents may gradually find it a challenge complicated by
the children’s unstable mental conditions,” he says.
“Every decision concerning these orphans
should be made on the perspective of these children instead of that
of adults,” he adds.
Sitting on the floor of Mianyang stadium, He
Junli says she misses the everyday phone calls from her father.
“He loved me very much, but now he is gone,” she says. “If
someone, somewhere out there could love me and accept me, I will
love them through my whole life.”
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