Hao Wei, an engineer with the Sichuan Road & Construction Group (SRCG), was a happy man yesterday, as he watched the final section of the Dujiangyan-Wenchuan highway reopen to traffic.

"This is the first time the road has been open to the public since the earthquake," Hao, who hails from Chengdu, the Sichuan capital, said.

"Most of us haven't had a day off since the quake hit on May 12," he said.

Prior to the earthquake the 95-km highway had 87 bridges: eight of them collapsed and 75 of them were damaged, Hao said.

For every kilometer of road, there was an average of 19 landslides, he said.

During a visit to Wenchuan yesterday, Premier Wen Jiabao said: "Some experts said it would take between one and two years to rebuild the highway. I didn't expect it to reopen within 100 days."

Because of the damage to the road, relief materials sent from Chengdu to Wenchuan had to go via Ya'an and Ma'erkang, Huang Jinping, general manager of SRCG's bridge construction company, told China Daily.

"The detour meant the materials had to travel 700 km instead of 110 km."

Between 3,000 and 5,000 people were living and working on the road at any one time, Huang said.

Despite the harsh conditions and constant aftershocks, nobody was killed or seriously injured, he said.

While meeting journalists yesterday in the town of Yingxiu in Wenchuan - the epicenter of the May 12 quake - Wen said he was impressed with the spirit of the Sichuan people to succeed in their reconstruction work.

The main thing now is to rebuild homes in the quake zone, he said.

Also, special attention must be paid to the reconstruction of schools so that parents can feel confident their children will be safe in the future, he said.

On Monday, Wen attended the reopening of Beichuan Middle School at a temporary site in the courtyard of a training center in Mianyang.

"This is my fourth trip to the school this year. On the first three, I did not smile or ask the number of casualties, for fear it might remind people of their misery," he said.

"But this time I was happy to see the children going back to school."

Wen said it could take up to three years for people's lives and communities to get back to the levels they were before the quake.

While it will be impossible to finish rebuilding all of the homes in the quake zone before winter, people from across the country will be mobilized to donate clothes and quilts to it, the premier said.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said yesterday that the central government has allocated 27 million yuan ($4 million) from the central emergency relief fund to help Sichuan and Yunnan provinces recover from the effects of Saturday's 6.1-magnitude earthquake.

About 10,000 large tents were sent to affected areas in Yunnan on Monday, while 1,000 larger ones will be sent for use as temporary classrooms, the ministry said.

Wang Jian, deputy head of the Panzhihua civil affairs bureau, the city at the epicenter of the quake, said people there are in urgent need of both shelter and fuel.

More than 18,000 tents had already been pledged, he said.

"But we still need at least 15,000 more and 65,000 quilts to provide temporary shelter for 200,000 people," he said.

As of 6 pm yesterday, the death toll from the quake was 38, with 1.1 million people affected and 392,000 houses damaged, Wang said.

(Xinhua, China Daily, September 3, 2008)