Migrant Workers Struggle After Quake
Chengdu, China — Hu Shaoyu left his family in Sichuan in February, expecting to see them again next Chinese New Year when he returned for his annual visit home from the clothing factory on the other side of the country where he works.
Instead, news of the devastating earthquake that struck near here, flattening cities and towns and killing as many as 80,000 people, brought him back just two months later, struggling to pick up the pieces of his fractured family. Before he boarded the train in Guangzhou for his two-day journey across China’s interior back to Sichuan, Hu already knew his elder sister had been killed and his five-year-old nephew was missing somewhere in the rubble. He hoped to return home and break the news gently to his elderly parents, and help his brother-in-law recover and rebuild.
