"Wenchuan does not believe in tears and the quake sufferers taught us how to cope with calamity," said Zhu Shijun, the second Olympic torch bearer in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, on Wednesday.
"I just can't adjust myself to the life here. All I want is to be back to the quake areas as soon as possible. They (Li's comrades in arms) always told me this (torch relay) is also passing a spirit of care, and I thought it over and agreed to carry the torch ," said the 30-year-old Zhu, a paramilitary policeman, who came back from the Sichuan earthquake relief squad and will be back to Sichuan for reconstruction soon.
Two-week experience in the disastrous region has been leaving deep marks in Li's memory. What he talked most are the people and matters in the quake region during his whistle stop in hometown.
"After the earthquake in Sichuan Province, everything you aspire like fame and benefits disappeared all of a sudden. What bears in people's minds are only living on in health or finding your relatives. You scratch my back and I scratch yours, and let's go on side by side. Everything is so simple in the quake region and you can strongly feel affection and no strangers at all. The goal is in common and everybody comes from the same family," said Zhu as he looked back on his stay at Xuankou town of Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province.
"At the moment, the Olympic flame is carrying such a mission of delivering care and humanity. As a matter of fact, everybody is supposed to live among concerns and hope."
The trauma and hardship upon the quake sufferers have been throwing Zhu and his colleagues into tears times without number, but it's also the quake sufferers that pulled them together. "The people in quake zone taught us how to face the calamity, how to live on optimistically. The survivors do not believe in tears there," said Zhu.
"We are extremely sad when we reached the disaster area. The quake survivors told us not to be like this and so far as you are here, you are giving us hope. 'Thank you, thank you,'" recalled Zhu.
"They came upon us and gave us a hug, and everyone of us burst into tears that moment."
An 8-magnitude earthquake in Wenchuan County of Sichuan Province on May 12 claimed more than 60,000 people's lives and aftershocks are still occurring and damaging the quake region and neighbouring provinces by Tuesday.
(Xinhua News Agency May 29, 2008)