Students walk between two rows of temporary structures yesterday that serve as dormitories and classrooms in Nanba town of Pingwu county. They were built after the May 12 earthquake destroyed or damaged school buildings in Sichuan province. A bigger and quake-resistant school is being built in Nanba and should be ready in September next year.

Zhang Liping and her classmates have many wishes for the New Year. But their biggest wish is to resume attending classes in their school.

The reconstruction of their school, destroyed in the May 12 earthquake, is going on in full swing, and the students are getting closer to realizing their dream.

Workers have already laid the foundation for two new buildings of Nanba Middle School in Nanba township of north Mianyang's Pingwu county. The structures will be safer for the 1,300 students because it would be quake-resistant.

Zhang has been told that the new school will have new buildings and added facilities such as a library, a garden, a much larger playground and a basketball court.

That is something more than the 14-year-old could have dreamed of. In fact, it has made her forget, though temporarily, the difficulties of living in a cramped dormitory with 39 others.

But before the new school is complete in September next year, Zhang and her schoolmates will have to continue attending classes in prefabricated rooms and dormitories near the construction site.

"It's so exciting to see it (the new school) coming up," she said.

Though no one was killed when the school buildings collapsed because the deadly quake struck 2 minutes before classes were to resume, the very mention of the disaster wells up emotions among the students.

Zhang and her classmates are worried about how safe the new buildings would be, but they are optimistic.

"I don't think a new and hi-tech school like that would be vulnerable. We'd be safe inside," Zhang said.

What adds to the students' confidence is the careful consideration that has gone into the design of the new buildings, Chen Honggui, chief project engineer, said. They can withstand a magnitude-8 quake.

The pillars of the old buildings had only five steel bars supporting them, whereas those of the new ones will have more than 30, Chen said. And the new steel bars will have a diameter of 2.5 cm, double that of the earlier ones.

The government has set up a joint supervision mechanism to maintain real-time monitoring of the buildings' quality, said Ren Bin, director of Nanba township's education and sports bureau. The school, the local construction bureau and a third-party supervision company will be responsible for the job.

"We want to ensure that every step is strictly implemented and closely monitored," Ren said.

School representative Wang Zhiren's job demands total dedication and care. The 60-year-old visits the construction site every day, inspecting every detail carefully.

Wang is a "reliable superintend" because all the three dormitory buildings whose construction he supervised a few years ago withstood the quake. Actually, they were the only school buildings that did not collapse.

"Most of the school buildings were built in the 1980s, when saving money was the priority and we didn't really give much thought to safety standards," Wang said.

Mianyang's municipal education bureau said that work has already started on 356 of the 807 schools to be rebuilt in the city. And the construction of another 116 will start soon before the end of the year.

The government has promised that all quake-hit students in Sichuan would move into permanent buildings by September in 2010.

(China Daily December 26, 2008)