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It was nearly 4am on 28 July, 1976 when Yao Huixin was woken by lightning and then deep, terrifying rumbles. Within seconds her house was crashing down on the family bed in which she and her husband were sleeping with two of their children. `Earthquake,' she shouted. She rolled over to cover her fiveyear-old son. Her husband leapt for the door. Unprotected, her eight-year-old daughter was crushed. They pulled her body from the rubble many hours later.

Mme Yao's city of Tangshan was at the epicentre of an earthquake that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and destroyed buildings all over northern China, including many in Beijing 220 miles away.

In Tangshan itself, a city of six million, not a single building was left unharmed. 242,469 people were killed. Over 12,000 were widowed; 4,000 children were orphaned and 3,817 people were paralyzed or permanently handicapped.

Mme Yao is now the Vice-Chairman of the People's Congress of Tangshan. Her distinguished but gentle face bears witness to considerable suffering. Yet, when she speaks about her life, her city and her country, her face sparkles with enthusiasm and passion.

`My son and I were saved by two beams falling at an angle over our heads,' she recalls. It took her husband and other son an hour to get them out. `At first I was bitter that he had jumped for the door and not protected our daughter,' she says. `But then I realized that, if he had, he would probably have been killed himself.'

Not that she had much time to think about such matters. As a teacher of anatomy and biology and a nurse, she spent the next five days tending to the injured as they were pulled from the rubble. Day-time temperatures reached 36 degrees Celsius.

`With tears in our eyes and sweat everywhere, everyone worked together,' she recalls. `My husband would go down deep into the ruins to find people. You had to be very careful when moving every stone.' There was no food - it was 24 hours before they had their first meal of chicken feed and water from a swimming pool. `Even when food was dropped by parachute, they could not do it over the city for fear of killing people. So we had to walk to the outskirts to get it.'

At noon the day after the earthquake, troops began to arrive. `You can imagine how we felt as we saw all those young men pouring in to help us.' Many eventually settled in the city and married local people and adopted some of the orphans.

Today, only one pile of rubble remains as a reminder of the tragedy - a library which was empty at the time. All around, modern, uniform buildings border wide tree-lined streets. Tangshan now boasts the highest living-space per person of any Chinese city. Coal mines, cement and railway rolling-stock factories and other heavy industries are working flat out. Porcelain, for which Tangshan has been famous for nearly a thousand years, is produced for local and world markets.

Mme Yao's ancestors came from Manchuria, although her name is Han. Her family changed its name at a time when the Han people looked down on Manchurians. `My grandparents told me that the Manchu emperors came from our group. But I'm not so sure,' she adds with a twinkle.

Whatever the truth about her ancestry, she was certainly born into a well-to-do family who owned land. Her early home was in Shenyang in the far north-east where her father also owned jewellery shops. In 1946 the family moved to Beijing where they were at the time of the Communist victory. `My father's land was confiscated,' says Mme Yao. `We became poorer and poorer. We had to sell everything.' Her father and some friends started a new business which, along with all private businesses, was taken over by the state in 1956. But her father was made a manager and received a salary. Still alive, Mme Yao's parents have `accepted all that has happened', she says.

Yao Huixin studied at university and at a teachers training college. She taught microbiology at university in Beijing and then at a middle school in Tangshan, where she became principal. She has also been principal of a nurses training college. She was reluctant to be drawn about what happened to her during the Cultural Revolution, a period which many Chinese call `a ten-year nightmare'.

At the time of the earthquake the `Gang of Four' (including Mao Zedong's widow) were in power. The people of Tangshan were told that the city must be rebuilt `by self-effort'. No help would be allowed from outside China - if offered, it would be rejected. `Two people can do the work of three and so free one person for reconstruction,' was the slogan.

`At the time it was inspiring,' says Mme Yao. `But after a while I couldn't understand it. After all, if other countries have natural disasters, Chinese people want to help. We heeded international help then and others would have wanted to help if they had been told.'

But things are changing, Mme Yao believes. Her concerns now, as living standards improve, are for the younger generation. `I was brought up to believe that courtesy and respect are important,' she says. `There is no class distinction in China now, and that is good. But a lot of attitudes imbibed from our ancestors are being thrown out. Perhaps it is the same everywhere?'

One of the questions she discussed with many people on her first visit to Europe this summer was `how to build a moral and spiritual civilization alongside the material one'.

`But,' she told me, `I am confident about the future of our country, particularly because we are opening our doors to the outside world and because reform is coming.'