Dujiangyan is a big town – almost a million people; anywhere else in the world it would be a city, in China cities without a few million citizens hardly count. Even now, you can see it was a beautiful place. It is nestled between Sichuan mountains which rise in the background. Driving around the city, you come across many public parks and squares. What remains speaks of past prosperity.

It was hit very hard by the earthquake. Unlike in agricultural communities, much of the population of the city works indoors in office buildings and stores and so the death toll was very high. The earthquake destruction was unevenly spread through the city. Some areas of the city are now eerily abandoned– with empty cracked buildings standing next a huge piles of rubble, sidewalks scattered with glass. Walking between these destroyed buildings, it feels like a war zone. The destruction speaks of such tremendous power; it is impossible to internalize the fact that the shaking earth created such destruction in a matter of seconds.

I have so very many dramatic pictures, it is difficult to know what to post…

In other places, huge, new apartment complexes stand unaffected, with people still living even in the upper floors. Most of the buildings in the city are somewhere between these extremes: still standing but cracked and structurally unsound. People now use the bottom floor of these buildings to sit and eat, or sell their wares, but the two or three floors above are abandoned. Like most places in the earthquake zone, life has moved outside.

What most distinguishes Dujiangyan from the other parts of the affected area is how affectively the government has moved to begin reconstruction. Dujiangyan is an easy 45min drive from the center of Chengdu along big highways the earthquake left intact. On May 12, the earthquake hit at 2:28; citizens tell me the soldiers arrived the same day, within hours. Ease of access meant that from the first day, Dujiangyan residents were provided with water and food. Soon tents arrived. Unlike agricultural communities, residents had no way of producing food for themselves and no livelihood left to sustain them. People living there now are intensely aware of how thoroughly they now rely on government aid; to a one people I talked to in Dujiangyan were impressed and gratified by the government response to the earthquake.

Thanks as always to Peng Xin for his help translating.