The new house will be finished late this year. Tang estimates it will take five to eight years to repay the loan and for life to return to normal.

"Actually I still haven't figured out where to start my new life," he says.

Tian Fugang's life was transformed by the quake. The 22-year-old technician suffered major paralysis and has been getting therapy in a rehabilitation center.

He learned to turn himself over in bed has had reconsider his relationship with his girlfriend.

"I don't want to be a burden to her. So if I cannot rely on myself, I will have to break up," he says.

He now practices hard and hopes to be chosen as a professional disabled athlete one day. Every day he walks with a special support for three or four hours, trains on parallel bars for half an hour, rides a bicycle for half an hour and has acupuncture for one hour.

More than 350,000 people were injured in the quake, around 100,000 of them were hospitalized. Many need rehabilitation but Sichuan has only been able to provide therapy for 6,000 people.

Student Wen Jia says she has learned an effective way to overcome her depression, thanks to a lot of counseling.

"The experts told me to think more about happy times with my classmates instead of the dreadful moment of their deaths," she says. "It's important to push the sad thoughts away and substitute good ones."

Wen also tries to help her classmates' parents who lost their children. One couple wanted to break up because of the unbearable sadness, which made them quarrel every day. Wen has been visiting them, talking to them and encouraging them to move on with their lives, leaving their pain behind.

And in a recent aftershock, although she was scared, Wen organized her roommates to run down the stairs hand in hand and went back to look for former schoolmates from Juyuan Middle School.

"I experienced the quake and survived it. I have to be strong," she says.

"I only hope I won't be afraid again when I recall the scene next time."

(Shanghai Daily February 11, 2009)