It is almost a year since the terrible earthquake jolted south China's Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008. Journalists from San Lian Life Weekly revisited the people from the quake-hit areas to see how their new lives are taking shape.

With a loan of 300,000 yuan (US$43,979)，Zhou Taijun and his wife have started to build their new home.

Most of the broken roads have already been fixed. Peace has returned, and amidst the peace you can feel the shoots of new life.

At Yingxiu Town, the ruins are gone. People are rebuilding their lives. Liang Bengui has restarted his ironmongery business. At Dujiangyan City, Zhang Xiqiang has established a ‘mobile kitchen' to prepare feasts for weddings, births, and the birthdays of elderly people.

At Shifang City, Wang Raofang and Zhao Mingchang await the birth of their new baby. The couple lost their 12-year-old son in the earthquake. In Beichuan County, Pang Yazhi, who lost her legs in the earthquake, is still looking forward to taking part in the table tennis game at her school's sports meeting. "I want to go to school - my classmates all go to school, why can't I?"

The earthquake has not only destroyed families, but also changed the survivors' way of life. These people have to seek out new ways of earning a living.

In Tai'an Village, Zhou Taijun has rebuilt a farmhouse restaurant with the help of a loan - bringing back tourism is considered the best hope for the small village. At Hongkou Town, where usable farmland is now very scarce, the best approach to reconstruction is to convert the agricultural town into a tourist one. In Xue Mensi Village, a communal approach has been readopted to encourage people to help each other build their new homes.

In Tai'an, with the village committee in charge of reconstruction, some villagers have chosen to rebuild their houses themselves. Rebuilding farmhouse restaurants is more problematic.

Tai'an is an ancient town situated behind the Qingcheng Mountain. In this village journalists saw Zhou Taijun, whom they got to know when they came last year. Zhou is still living in his temporary shelter. With the objective of rebuilding his home, he did not move to the temporary housing area, which lies 17 kilometers from here.

"Was it cold in winter?" asked the journalist.

"Don't worry. I'm strong," Zhou smiled. He is also optimistic, although he lost all his property in the earthquake.

Zhou, whose daily work is collecting parking charges at Tai'an parking lot, has been here since 1991. He talked about his life in the last year.

On July 12 2008, troops began to withdraw from the town, which marked the ending of the rescue work as well as the beginning of reconstruction. Zhou recalled that this was such an emotional day that soldiers and villagers wept together.

For Zhou, the real construction work began in October. He planted garlic stems and pakchoi on the hillside. In his spare time, he also retrieved 3,000 bricks and some timber from the debris, for use as the raw materials for his new home.