China comes to a halt to honor earthquake victims

For three minutes that seemed like an eternity, this very busy nation of 1.3 billion people today stopped shopping, producing, eating, talking, driving.

Instead, they stood still, heads bowed in mourning in commemoration for victims of last week’s earthquake. The memorial began at 2:28 p.m. local time, exactly one week after the deadly tremor. Many said it was the biggest display of mourning in China since the death of Mao Tse-tung in 1976.

With each passing day since the quake struck, there is ever more to grieve. The Chinese government announced today that more than 200 rescue workers had perished over the last two days, mainly because of landslides set off by aftershocks. There was little detail provided, except that 158 of those killed were transportation workers who’d been buried while trying to repair a road leading to the epicenter in the town of Wenchuan in Sichuan province.

Fears of more aftershocks were fueled by a report from three provincial earthquake centers that a strong tremor between 6 to 7 in magnitude would strike over the next 24 hours.

The confirmed death toll from last week’s magnitude 7.9 earthquake was raised today to more than 34,000 and was expected to climb to 50,000. More than 4 million people are homeless and 245,000 injured.

To mark the country’s largest natural disaster in more than 30 years, the Chinese government declared a three-day mourning period beginning Sunday. Movie theaters were closed. Television stations canceled most entertainment programs, and movie networks such as HBO and Cinemax were blacked out. The Olympic torch relay was suspended until Wednesday. Flags flew at half-staff.

From Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to Shanghai’s Bund to the far-flung villages where rescue workers were still trying to dig out the living from the rubble, everything simply came to a pause. It was an amazing sight in a country that on a normal Monday afternoon would be such a hive of activity. Trains stopped in their tracks. Cars on the huge ring roads encircling Beijing stopped. Drivers in unison leaned on their horns so that a giant siren seemed to be shrieking.

People stood up inside buses and trains. Office workers stood on the sidewalks, students at their desks and on playgrounds. Police officers cradled their caps in their arms as they stood at attention. Many wept openly.

“We are so willing to share the suffering of the people of Sichuan, but except for donating this is the only thing we can do,” said Zhou Shuyang, a 22-year-old student who joined thousands at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Many were students, about the same age as those who had filled the square with demonstrations in 1989, while others old enough to have been those students brought their children, some carried up high on shoulders to view the scene.

At the end of the memorial, the crowd erupted in cries of “Long Live China,” with students waving the red Chinese flag.

The burst of patriotism was apparent too at Shanghai’s People’s Square.

“Although we are a nation that suffered a lot of disasters, and this was another one, we are very united. We have confidence to conquer this event,” said Zhuang Guifang, a retired accountant whose eyes teared behind her sunglasses.

Zhuang said she was proud of the way her country was handling the earthquake, the way that Premier Wen Jiabao flew out to the disaster area within hours, the rapid deployment of the military. Her entire family, from her mother in her 80s to her 3-year-old granddaughter, has donated money for the relief effort.

Jing Jun, a sociologist at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, said this is the largest gathering of mourners since Mao’s death, far more extensive than a commemoration for Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997.

“I have been in a debate for some time with my academic friends who believe that market reforms have ruined China’s moral fabric,” Jing said. “But I think this shows it isn’t the case. There is still a fundamental level of decency and compassion in Chinese that has not been brought down by individualism.”

 barbara.demick@latimes.com

Times staff writers Don Lee in Shanghai and Mark Magnier in Chengdu, China, contributed to this report.