What gave him a little comfort was that local government immediately ordered all officials to take compulsory vacations in the last two months of this year and to take weekends off, instead of making Luo a role model and asking other officials to learn from him as it used to, Gao said.

"I believe Luo also wanted us to take a good rest," he said.

Gao took his wife and son Gao Wentao to play in the park near to their apartment Saturday. When playing within a toy plane, Gao Wentao asked his father to take him to a real plane.

"Actually I had planned for a long time to take him to Beijing during the National Day holiday in October," Gao said. However, the quake, which directly affected nearly 50 million people in Sichuan and nearby provinces, disturbed everything.

Although Gao can have a week off before the end of this year, he still cannot make the trip then as he was not allowed to leave the county, according to his orders.

"It may take more than one year to realize my son's dream," he said.

Tang Chengyi has a dream to realize at the moment.

Living in the mountainous area of Pingwu County, Tang had to finish building a temporary wood house to resist the harsh winter, during which the lowest temperature may be under 15 degrees centigrade.

The small mine owner's house and one truck were damaged, and his backbone was hit in the quake. After receiving treatment in Yunnan Province for one month, Tang went back and planned to build a permanent house for his family with the support of the government. The government provided a starting fund of about 20,000 yuan (2,900 U.S. dollars) and a special loan with the highest amount of 50,000 yuan for each household that wanted to build permanent house.

However, his new house, with the first floor just completed, was torn down in one of the aftershocks in August and the original location was deemed unsuitable for construction any more.

Now, he has almost completed the construction of the temporary house, while still waiting for land to build the permanent one.

He said the temporary house would be enough to help them get through this winter, with new quilts and electric blankets distributed by the government.

"I hope we can move into the permanent house as soon as possible," said the 45-year-old. However, he said it wouldn't be finished until the end of next year, and it would take five to eight years for him to repay the loan and get everything back to normal.

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

Tian Fugang's life was totally changed by the quake. The 22-year-old former technician, who has been receiving therapy in the rehabilitation center for quake survivors in the West China Hospital, had to make an entirely different plan for his future after he was paralyzed by the disaster.

He even had to learn how to turn himself over in the bed and had to reconsider his relationship with his girlfriend.

"I don't want to be a burden for her. Therefore, if I couldn't rely on myself in the future, I would break up with her," he said.

He now practiced hard to improve his physical ability and hoped to be chosen as a professional disabled athlete one day.

Now, every day, Tian walks with special aid supporting his body for three to four hours, trained on parallel bars for half an hour, rides a bicycle for half an hour and has acupuncture therapy for one hour.