When Hao Haizheng was admitted to Hebei Polytechnic University two years ago, Tangshan was just the name of a city to him. But unlike other second-tier Chinese cities, it is associated with one terrible event.

"My knowledge of the Tangshan Earthquake came from my high-school textbooks and what my parents told me," said the sophomore at the university's Resources and Environment School.

He was instantly able to picture what he had learned when he came face to face with the old library on the campus.

"I could sense it was only the tip of the iceberg. But I was truly shocked to the core."

The campus in downtown Tangshan was only 4 kilometres from the epicentre of the 1976 earthquake. The 4,049-square-metre library, completed only days earlier but not yet in use, suffered a blow that was symbolic of both the loss and tenacity of this old industrial town.

The western part of the reading area, which was a three-storey structure, became a pile of debris.

Had there been people inside, they would have had no chance of surviving.

The eastern part, a slightly taller and independent structure, suffered only cracks.

As for the four-storey stack room on the north side, the first floor became rubble while the remaining three floors shifted sideways 1 metre but did not fall apart.

But even this site, which was listed as one of the key remains of the earthquake as early as 1980 and was elevated to the status of national historical relic this year, cannot tell the full story of what Tangshan survivors went through that July morning.

Tan Pengru, 75, considers himself one of the lucky ones. A girder fell onto his chest and legs, but in an ensuing jolt, not only was it bounced off, but his own body was tossed outdoors through an opening in the wall caused by the first tremor.

"As I lay on the street, I felt like I was caught in a tidal wave. Flashes of blue lightning flared across the sky, roads heaved up and down and buildings were like boats in an ocean," he recalled.

People were stunned into silence, not knowing what had happened. It took quite a while before they started screaming and yelling for help.

With daybreak, Tan and other survivors saw the enormity of the catastrophe. "I lost a 3-year-old daughter. But I had a neighbour - a big family with 24 members, only two survived. What do I have to complain about?"

One week later, Tan walked down Victory Street on crutches. The four-lane street was lined with dead bodies, barely leaving room for a bicycle path. Sometimes, the corpses were stacked into piles, and in between them, survivors were cooking their meals in makeshift stoves, oblivious to the horror and the stench that permeated the air.

There was also a short period of lawlessness when food and clean water were extremely scarce. "We had airdrops of food, but people had to fight for them. There was occasional violence," he sighed. Fortunately law and order was quickly restored with the help of the army that was pouring into the city and mounting a mammoth rescue effort.

Tan, a tall, thin man, used to work at a public security department, "but I have many hobbies, including singing Peking Opera, practising calligraphy and qigong. Good health and enjoying life is the most important thing to me."

Tan and his opera buddies formed a club in the early 1980s. Now they sing three times a week, in parks or simply on sidewalks when stores are closed in the evening. "I don't want my twilight years to be haunted by terrible memories. I want to live at peace with what happened on that night," he said outside the local VW dealer on Monday night, before launching into a grand aria in his shaky but powerful voice.

Sun Mengcui was 25 when the quake brought the roof crashing down onto her, leaving her permanently paralyzed. "I was not married yet, and of course I suffered depression," said the clerk of a retailer 45 kilometres from downtown Tangshan.

But fate intervened again. She met her husband and he proposed to her. They got married in 1981 and have a daughter.

"I live a normal and happy life. My family takes good care of me," she said outside the Tangshan Earthquake Museum while her son-in-law pushed her wheelchair.

Across the street from the ruins of the old library stands a new 20,000-square-meter one, donated by Hong Kong tycoon Run Run Shaw.

"The episode of suffering and misery is behind us," said Tan. "And the bravery and self-sacrifice of rescue workers has been an asset and an inspiration. But above all, it shows that human spirit can never be wiped out."

As time goes on, the loss has crystallized into a set of numbers.

"The quake killed 1,257 in our university, including 313 teachers and staff and 414 students. There were 72 families that were totally wiped out," said Hao Haizheng, rattling the numbers off quickly.

Once a teacher described his near-death experience to Hao's class. "We were fascinated. It was the first time we got to know such vivid details," he said.

"I keep telling myself this was what my father's generation went through."

(China Daily July 28, 2006)