Wang said his 20 staff have never left the compound since the quake.

"Most of their homes were damaged and family members injured."

Zhen Bo, the youngest of the 10 workers, said he cannot stand up straight due to severe lumbago.

"It's because we have been working long hours and have to bow down to work," the spectacled man who could not even make time to see his baby boy born on June 1, said.

"We have too much work to do here. As long as I know my family is safe, it's OK," he said.

"We sent off those who passed away in the huge tragedy," he continued.

"The work involved direct contact with family members and was very important for comforting the living and respecting the deceased."

"Our workers were beaten and cursed by some who were not patient for the procedures involved," Wang said.

"We know their pain and so we got over it."

A sobbing woman surnamed Gu said the workers had been patient and kind.

It was the fifth time she had been to pay tribute to her 11-year-old nephew, who died in a collapsed school building located in Dujiangyan.

"He was a lovely boy. Now his ashes are here, awaiting the move to a burial ground built for his school," Gu, who was wearing white cloth on her head and straw around the waist, a traditional Chinese way to remember the dead, said.

Meanwhile, in the hall of the funeral home, some stories are even more tragic.

Four boards with pictures of quake victims were displayed for people to identify their lost loved ones.

Since June 8, the boxed ashes and basic information of 400 unclaimed bodies at the nine funeral homes were moved here for identification work, Wang said.

Unidentified dead bodies are cremated within 24 hours to prevent health risks, he said.

Before that, a photograph was taken of each corpse, he said.

Hair, blood, nails, and other tissues were recorded by specialized forensic identification team to enable DNA identification at some later date.

So far, about 95 corpses have been claimed by their relatives, he said.

"Only after a series of procedures can the ashes of the dead be taken home by their family members."

Starting on May 16, funeral homes at Sichuan were ordered by the central government to provide free cremation services for the quake victims and to charge no more than 300 yuan for urns.

"In the first few days, we even ran out of the boxes, but then we got a donation of 800 boxes from Henan province," Wang said.

As of yesterday, nearly 70,000 have been killed by the quake, a great number of whom were buried in those areas where cremation services are unavailable.

The government will build a DNA database of those unidentified dead bodies after the disastrous Sichuan earthquake for later identification.

(China Daily June 13, 2008)