Pepper trees witness painful tremor

In the hills surrounding the site of the recent earthquake, ripe peppers hang heavy from tree limbs, waiting to be picked. A bamboo basket sits abandoned next to a collapsed clay farmhouse, its owner nowhere to be found.

Many of the victims of the 6.5-magnitude earthquake that claimed more than 600 lives in southwest China's Yunnan Province were pepper farmers.

Had 10-year-old Yu Caiwei helped his parents harvest just a little bit longer on the day of the earthquake, he may have escaped death.

"He had helped me pick several kilos of peppers before the earthquake happened," said Yu's mother Li Shuzhi, openly weeping.

The fourth grader was enjoying his summer vacation in Hongshiyan Village, Qiaojia county. After an afternoon's work in the pepper fields on Aug. 3, he told his parents he was heading home to rest, eating a steamed potato and finishing his homework before heading back out, Li recalled.

Ranked one of the top in his class, Yu had a promising future filled with hopes of leaving the mountainous area to enter university and work in the city.

It took just five seconds for the earthquake to destroy their home. Afterwards, Yu was nowhere to be seen. His body took rescuers three days to recover from the wreckage.

Yu's father Yu Chaoli, who worked in nearby Longtongshan Township, rushed home the next day on foot as the earthquake and days of continuous downpour disrupted traffic to the village.

"If I had stayed home his body would have been retrieved earlier," he said.

If the earthquake had not hit Qiaojia, the family would have made around 10,000 yuan (1,625 U.S. dollars) this year growing corn and peppers. Most families in the area, like Yu's, cannot afford brick houses capable of withstanding medium-sized earthquakes.

"Clay houses are easy to build in mountainous area. We can carry clay in baskets, but have to rely on livestock if we are carrying bricks or concrete," said Wang Shicui, whose grandmother and niece were killed in the earthquake. The cost of transporting a single bag of concrete is about 5 to 7 yuan from the foot of the mountain to the village, she added.

In the remote Zhoujiaping Village of Baogunao Township, the average annual income was only 700 yuan last year.

According to the World Bank's poverty standard of 1.25 U.S. dollars a day, 200 million Chinese still live under the poverty line.

"If the quake had happened at night, only 10 percent of the villagers, those with brick houses, would have survived," said Wang Yongzhong, an elderly resident of Zhoujiaping Village.

To earn more, villagers have started planting pepper trees instead of corn, boosting annual incomes from 1,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan per mu (0.067 hectare), according to Wang.

Wang Quanfu grew eight trees before the earthquake. His wife left the poverty-stricken family 10 years ago, leaving him a daughter and two sons. He had expected to pay tuition for his sons, aged 13 and 11, with the pepper income, but the earthquake took the sons' lives.

His daughter Wang Kunmin, suffering from eye and waist injuries, was receiving treatment in a nearby hospital. He also has an elderly mother to support.

"My sons have gone. My spirit is totally crushed," he said.

Terrible road conditions were one of the biggest challenges faced by rescuers, as well as the poor development of the village, said Pu Enyue, Party head of the village.

"Following more than 50 days of rains prior to the earthquake, even motorcycles could not move along the muddy road," he said.

Rescuers walked for seven hours before they arrived at the village of 3,000 people, where houses were scattered between altitudes of 1,200 to 2,000 meters.

"If more rescuers had arrived earlier, there might have been fewer deaths," he said.

Wu Shunyi, deputy head of Qiaojia County, said he hopes the central government will increase spending on poverty-stricken areas like Qiaojia, improving infrastructure and building earthquake-resistant homes for villagers.

Pu suggested the government help cut part of the mountain flat so villagers could be relocated to the same area. "People will take better care of each other by collective relocation," he said.

Father Wang Quanfu buried his sons on the hill where his pepper trees grew. After days of despair, he decided to pull himself together.

"I'd better find a job in cities after my daughter recovers," he said.