The date was 28 July 1976 when the Great Tangshan quake took place. Everyone in Tangshan knew that the magnitude of the earthquake was undoubtedly higher than 8, even though the reported strength of the earthquake that had laid waste to the entire city of Tangshan was a mere 7.8. In mere days, the once-booming metropolis, now turned into a tract of ruins and rubble, had its inhabitants fleeing frantically to open areas for their safety.

Like a stone in the middle of a flowing river, was a small vehicle, standing in the midst of the thronging evacuees rushing to leave the ground zero of the earthquake. It was an NJ130 truck, usually used by local dwellers for the transport of foodstuff, retrofitted with tall railings on the bed on its rear. Parked just at the side of the rubbles, some of the impatient and anxious inhabitants of the city leaped onto the truck bed and jumped over the top of the truck’s cab. Some even squeezed through the sides in their haste to run away. Suddenly, the engines of the vehicle roared to life! The driver had earlier managed to escape before his family could, hence he was now sitting in his lorry, trying to find them. He began forcing his way through the crowd like an icebreaker plowing through fields of ice. Two people who had tried to clamber over his truck when it was still, only to be thrown back by the momentum of the truck into the truck bed when it began to move, unable to get up to their feet. They had tried to get out several times but failed. Giving up, they decided to wait until the truck stopped.

The truck sped frantically for more than tens of miles until it reached a muddy path although the mucky and sodden route did little to extinguish the driver’s need for haste. He drove on for another two or three miles and reached a small river. The bridge leading to the other side of the river’s bank was already damaged by the tremor, allowing no one to cross over. The driver stopped and walked up the bridge, examining the gap between the broken part of the bridge. He then doubled back and began to run, dashing as quick as he could and leaped onto the other side before he ran on and disappeared into the lush sorghum fields. The two people stuck on the bed of the truck finally climbed down. They were children; both of them were about fourteen or fifteen, one a boy and the other a girl. Darkness was upon them now. They got into the cab of the truck and waited, hoping for the driver to return. Gradually, they both fell asleep, although their slumber was hardly peaceful and quiet, for aftershocks of the quake came, again and again, rousing them from their rest. When they woke up in the morning, the children found themselves in a lush sorghum field. They began to feel worried and afraid, knowing neither where they were nor what they should do. With no other ideas, they could only hope for a Good Samaritan to pass by!

The sun rose higher and higher as noon loomed ahead. Finally, they saw someone coming! The person in checked pants was walking along the banks of the river towards them, bare-chested as he clenched a willow branch in his teeth. With several fishes carried by the branch, he was still catching fishes. The children approached him and found that the person was a boy of similar age. The boy stopped not far away from the mouth of the river and began digging for loaches. The children went to talk to him and found that the boy was sent by his parents into the city to find out about the wellbeing of his relatives. After making sure that his relatives were fine, the playful boy walked back home, but he stopped halfway to fish. Filled with interest, the two children watched him. The girl, who was also a chatty person in nature, then said, “Please teach us how to catch them!” Being an honest child who grew up in the countryside, the boy then taught the pair of children how to dig for loaches.

He explained while demonstrating to them, “Dig through the mud until you find their nest, a crevasse with smooth walls. Keep your hands shaped like how you would receive an ice cream cone and reach into the nest, pushing downwards. Use your other hand to scoop some water into the hole. When you touched and caught a loach, give it some space to squirm and turn by lifting one of your fingers. When you feel that it has turned its head upwards, close your fingers in and grab at its head tightly. Finally, just pull it out.” He then taught them how to make some cords using willow shrubs that they would use to tie the loaches, “Snap apart a willow shrub and peel off its bark. Wrap around it with your mouth biting on one end. Stretch the coilings down and stop when you reach the end. There you have it.” The two children were quick learners. Before the sun was hanging high in the sky, the boy from the countryside had already caught enough loaches for two bundles and the pair of children from the city had caught one bundle full of harvest. “Why don’t you take this with you, brother,” said the boy from the city, “We have no use for these.” “But they are fruits of your labor. I cannot just take these,” the village boy said shyly, “How about this? I’ll lead you to another river two or three miles west of here. It’s called Huan Xiang River. There are not many people there, but it’s close to my house. I’ll bring these loaches home and cook them; then I’ll bring them to you!”

And so the children followed the village boy upriver where they then waited for him. He came back at noon, carrying with him a large bowl of loaches stew along with two Chinese pancakes. The two children ate up before they continued playing with the village boy. They then talked about themselves, even swearing an oath of brotherhood together like the characters in “Water Margin”. They were all fifteen, but the village boy was the eldest, the boy from the city the second and the little girl the youngest of them. When night came, the older boy went to a nearby school and had a friend opened one of the classrooms. He then left the two younger children to rest there for the night for the tables in the school could also provide shelter if there were any more earthquakes. The three friends then spent three days together. The children from the city had lost their parents; hence they decided not to return to Tangshan. The older boy would slip some food from home for them quietly for his sworn siblings to quench their hunger. Later on, the youngest child then confessed that she were separated from her cousin in the chaos during the earthquake. Behaving like the leader of the siblings, the older boy instructed the younger girl to return to the city for her cousin. With many emergency vehicles speeding by every day following the disaster, they flagged down an ambulance that gave the young girl a lift into the city. Before she left, the young girl even made her swear that she would return even if she had failed to locate her cousin!

After seeing off their little sister, the two brothers decided that they could not survive long by depending on food stolen from home! The older brother began leading his sibling around to hunt for wild herbs and cicada shells in the day where they would be trapping birds in the night. These items were quite popular in the market those days. There was also a well in the village that the local population depended on. The older brother borrowed a pulley and tied a rope around his brother. With the help of the pulley, he lowered his brother into the well where the younger sibling would scrub and clean the walls of the well. They would then walk from door to door with a wicker basket and collect some grain from the villagers. As a sign of appreciation, the villages rewarded them with food for they understood the good that the boys were bringing to them! What was more, the boys found a watch and a Parker pen which they took to a connoisseur who confirmed to them the items’ intrinsic value. The younger brother was covered by soot and mud when his older sibling pulled him out of the well! Only God knew what torments and hardships they have endured earning money!

But what were they planning to use the money for? Rotenone. The substance, extracted from vine plants, was commonly used to paralyze the gills of fish. A simple bottle of rotenone could quickly kill a pond full of fishes. But rotenone is not widely produced nowadays. The older brother knew of a trench at another village about a few miles to the east. The pit, spanning more than ten acres wide, was once dug to collect clay for the use of making bricks. But many years ago it was abandoned and had become a pond now filled with fishes. The brothers borrowed a spray and used it to spray some rotenone over the pond. In just one night, they caught a wagon full of fishes about eighty-five kilograms. Together, they pulled the wagon into the market and sold the fish for more than a hundred yuan. In those days, one hundred yuan was a tremendously large amount of money. It was equivalent to the two-months’ wages of a laborer! Therefore, for the next few months, they no longer worried about money! Later on, the older sibling even found his brother another means of earning money.

There was this carriage station in the town that was not hit by the earthquake; an inn where people passing by the town stopped over for the night and rested their horses. The older brother got his younger sibling a job there where the younger brother helped with the menial chores such as helping to draw water, cleaning the stables and disposing of horse feces. The manager even allowed the younger brother to keep and eat any leftovers. This, at least, maintained a steady life for the younger sibling; along with the money that they had gotten from selling the fish, the watch and the pen from the well. The older brother then entered high school and began preparing to sit for the National College Entrance Examination. An idea then struck him: he could give brother lessons. As one of the top students in his class, the older brother then told his family that he would be studying until the night before he went home; instead, he would every day visit his brother and teach him! Although it had a bad effect on his academic performance, the older brother had passed the exam and was accepted into a school at Qinhuangdao city. Knowing that separation was inevitable, the two brothers hugged and wept together!

However, the older brother had barely stayed in Qinhuangdao city for more than a month, when his younger brother appeared suddenly outside his schoolyard. He could not bear staying behind, and had walked and begged for hundreds of miles until he finally reached Qinhuangdao! The older brother, with the help of a few close friends, found his brother a place to stay in one of the empty dormitories in his school. They also left him some food from their meals too. Finally, when his studies were completed, the older brother was assigned to Tangshan for his internship. With his little brother quietly in tow, they returned to Tangshan where the older brother helped to locate the street where his younger sibling once lived at. They were fortunate to find many neighbors who still recognized him. This helped him regain his identity and his place at a school. From henceforth, the older brother would send his sibling a half of his wages, knowing that it was not cheap living in the city. The young brother, with gritting tenacity, finished his schooling with extraordinary achievements and was accepted into a medical university. As an orphan of the disastrous earthquake, he was awarded a scholarship where he was state-sponsored to continue his education overseas. Everything began to sail smoothly for the younger brother finally. But out of his love for his brother, he returned and became a famous cardiothoracic surgeon.

Everyone at the table was sniffling by now, trying to hold back their tears as I then continued the story in my father’s stead, saying, “By then, we’d already reached Mr. Zhang’s office. But when I opened the door of the car, I found Mr. Zhang and Mr. Nie in each other’s arms, sobbing with tear-filled faces! They did not howl and shriek like how Liu Wenhua and his family did, but tears flowed uncontrollably from their already-swollen eyes. My father looked to me and said, ‘I believe you now understand. Mr. Zhang, Zhang Baoguo, was the older brother; while Dr. Nie, Nie Xiaojun, was the younger brother!’ Finally, I fully understood their relation! My father then patted their shoulders and said, ‘There’s no need for tears for tales of glad tidings. Come. Into your office we go, and I’ll continue with my tale!’ ”