Rebuilt Chinese City a Model of Hope for Kobe : Disasters: Tangshan was leveled by a temblor in 1976. It serves as an example that even the most devastated community can rise from the rubble and prosper again.

This is a city of broad avenues and spacious parks. Its 1.5 million residents live in modern concrete housing. They shop in new department stores stocked with the latest electronic appliances.

Everything is new in Tangshan, a northern manufacturing and mining center 100 miles east of Beijing.

Everything old was destroyed 19 years ago in the most destructive and deadly earthquake in modern history.

For the Japanese city of Kobe, struck this month by a quake that left more than 5,000 people dead and nearly 300,000 homeless, Tangshan serves as an example that even the most devastated community on Earth can rise from the rubble, bury its dead and prosper again.

“We have great sympathy for those people in Japan,” said He Shuyun, 46, a technical college worker who survived the July, 1976, quake. “We went through the same thing here.”

In all, more than 240,000 people--one-fourth of the city’s population--died in the Tangshan temblor.

Superstitious people believe that the monstrous quake was summoned by the gods to herald the imminent death of Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung; he died 43 days later.

Indeed, the Tangshan quake marked the end of Chairman Mao’s rule and signaled the finish of the 10-year Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese people, divided and brutalized by political divisions during the Cultural Revolution, rallied mightily to aid the stricken residents of Tangshan.

Military aircraft sprayed the city with disinfectant to prevent the spread of disease. People’s Liberation Army troops built pontoon bridges over rivers to reach the scene from their northern posts in Manchuria.

City planners, imported from eight other municipalities across China, came to Tangshan to design entire neighborhoods from scratch.

Factory workers from Beijing sent tons of supplies, and one town, Handan, in the southern part of Hebei province took in 600 children orphaned by the disaster.

With great and horrible natural violence, the era of ideological terror ended here. The healing process began.

To this day, the Tangshan quake is remembered not only as a natural disaster for the mineral-rich area of northeast Hebei province, but also as a great human triumph in recovery for the Chinese people.

“We have a Chinese expression,” said Tangshan city official Lu Shushan, 53. “ Yin Huo De Fu : ‘Coming to fortune through disaster.’ ”

Lu was 34 years old and a teacher at the No. 13 Middle School when the 7.8-magnitude quake struck at 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976.

“I was trapped in the rubble for more than an hour,” he recalled recently. “When I finally crawled out, nothing was left standing, only a few walls.” After finding his wife and two young children still alive, Lu said he began clearing debris, searching for survivors.

Of the 15 teacher families living in housing at the school, only two families escaped unscathed. Three families were wiped out; the rest suffered at least one death. In all of Tangshan, 7,000 entire families were extinguished.

Among the dead in Tangshan that day were six seismologists who were visiting from the Hebei Earthquake Bureau in the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang to investigate signs of an impending temblor.

Several hundred coal miners, underground at the time of the quake, all survived.

Those who first dug themselves out of the rubble reported an eerie silence.

Then began a chorus of victims calling for help.

Surviving mine worker Li Yulin wasted no time when he saw the extent of the disaster. Not even bothering to wipe the grime from his face, Li jumped in the coal mine’s ambulance and drove to Beijing, where he immediately reported to the central Beijing compound where Mao and other senior leaders lived.

The Tangshan earthquake was the deadliest since 1556, when the most deadly earthquake in history killed 830,000 in China’s Shaanxi province.

But less than two decades after it was leveled, Tangshan has made a remarkable recovery that should give Kobe hope. The destruction was so bad in one neighborhood, Lunan, that the site was abandoned--its factories, schools and homes rebuilt at another location, miles away.

Because the destruction was so complete--similar to that suffered by heavily bombed German cities in World War II--rebuilding Tangshan was, in fact, the birth of a completely new city. City residents were organized into “Resist Earthquake, Rescue Ourselves From Disaster” work units.

More than $800 million in emergency funds from central government and provincial government coffers was poured into the reconstruction.

The reconstruction was blessed with a visit by Hua Guofeng, Mao’s short-term replacement at the seat of power.

“The whole city was essentially replanned from top to bottom,” said Tangshan city executive secretary Zhao Shuzhen.

As a result of this radical form of urban renewal, Tangshan became a model for urban planning.

Its broad streets and newly engineered infrastructure made it attractive to industry and foreign investors.

Even the population of Tangshan has recovered, growing from less than 800,000 after the earthquake to 1.5 million today. Since 1978, the city’s annual gross production has risen more than tenfold to $3 billion. With a per capita monthly income of 2,624 yuan, or $300, Tangshan ranks 23rd among China’s 460 major cities.

It has a large chemical industry that did not exist before the quake. Other major industries include iron and steel; cement and construction materials, and ceramics. Tangshan is one of the country’s main producers of toilet bowls. Around Tangshan, miners exploit abundant coal supplies, oil and even some gold deposits.

According to city secretary Zhao, more than $300 million in foreign investment has come into Tangshan since the quake. Potential investors who fear that another earthquake might strike Tangshan need not worry, explained Zheng Guorong, director of the Tangshan Earthquake Bureau.

“You go back to your country and tell your compatriots they don’t have to worry about Tangshan,” said Zheng, a burly man who moved here a month after the disaster. “According to our analysis, for at least the next 100 years there will not be an earthquake here.

“It’s almost like getting a vaccination,” he said. “After you have one earthquake, you don’t have to worry about another.”

Tempest was recently on assignment in Tangshan.