Ge Jun was on the phone with a teacher at Beichuan High School, his alma mater, when the quake hit.

"I was telling him I'd bought the book he requested and he said he'd take me out for dinner to thank me. Then the school was leveled, so I don't know whether he's still alive."

Zhao Qingyong and Yang Dan were lucky their quest to find their lost 10-month-old son ended happily.

While the Dujiangyan couple was out having lunch with a relative on Monday, they left the child with his grandmother.

Chatting at a streetside store when the earth suddenly trembled, the grandmother tried to run to the middle of the street, but tripped.

As she was buried by falling rubble, the baby flew from her clutches. Thankfully, although he was badly bruised, he was rescued and taken away in an ambulance.

The couple then embarked on a fruitless and nerve-racking 44-hour search, scanning every hospital in nearby towns.

Finally, they were alerted to photographs of lost ones that had been posted online.

One featured a baby boy in a floral shirt and a yellow vest, which was exactly what they dressed their son in on Monday.

They found out later that the hospital their son was at was one they had called into the previous day, before the baby arrived there.

Believing the child had been orphaned, nurses named him "Duyi", meaning an orphan from Dujiangyan.

This will forever be his nickname, his parents said.

(China Daily May 17, 2008)