The quake killed 240,000 people and left 160,000 badly injured.

Dang Yuhong, aged just six months when the quake took place, was the youngest survivor. Her parents died in the tremor.

But Dang received good education and now she is married and has a son.

"I work in the local association for disabled people and in my city, the orphans and crippled people are two important groups," Dang said.

Various activities were held in the city on Saturday marking the 25th anniversary of the disaster which hit 7,200 families and damaged over 97 percent of the industrial and residential buildings.

Over the past 25 years, three generations of leadership of the CPC have placed great importance on the reconstruction of the city.

The last document the late Chairman Mao Zedong read was a report on the calamity.

"Rescue personnel must be dispatched to Tangshan as soon as possible to calm the victims and to express my sympathy for them," Mao said on his sickbed before he died.

After the quake, large-scale construction of a new Tangshan was launched in 1978.

During an inspection to the city, China's late leader Deng Xiaoping urged urban modernization of the city, saying that issues related to city's layout and environmental protection should be given consideration during the rebuilding.

Deng even offered instruction on specific issues such as construction materials of the buildings, bath and toilet facilities and afforestation of the city.

When the city commemorated the 20th anniversary of the earthquake in 1996, President Jiang Zemin declared that Tangshan would have a more prosperous and beautiful future.

So far, China has spent over 5 billion yuan (US$602 million) on rebuilding the city after the earthquake.

The gross national product (GNP) of Tangshan reached 91.5 billion yuan (US$11 billion) in 2000, some 40 times the figure before the quake. Tangshan has entered China's top 20 cities in terms of overall strength.

(China Daily 07/30/2001)