They have just found another body. A dead man is lying face down in the rubble. His head and shoulders are clear, the rest of him is buried. He is only a few feet from the road. That he could have lain in the open unnoticed for so long gives a clear indication of the scale of the task, and the extent of the chaos.
A hygiene operative sprays carefully around him, covering his blackened body with a white chemical film, and a disposal squad is sent for
They have found a little money too, and brought it out to the street. Some tens and fifties and a bank book in the top of a cardboard box – perhaps a couple of hundred yuan. They spray that as well.
Behind the man's body is the first standing building on the avenue. It is a block of low-rise apartments. The dividing wall between two blocks has sheared away and collapsed, leaving the next block still erect, although it lurches at a threatening angle. Bizarrely, the contents of the standing home are untouched. The clothes in the built-in wardrobes that were against the fallen wall are still hanging on their rails.
No dignity in death – Victims' privacy is stripped away.
On the top floor was a child's wardrobe. Below it a man's. Are they the clothes of the dead man who lies below them? It seems excessively cruel to be robbed of all dignity in death.
Walking back up the avenue, we are surrounded by little personal effects strewn around. Children's toys and baby clothes are everywhere. Some mahjong tiles lie scattered on the ground – was a group of friends in the middle of a game when the earthquake struck?
Most heart-rending of all are the photos. An album of a little girl, no more than five or six years old. A family book with a picture of a boy just a little older, staring at the camera with the rigid expression that boys of that age hold when they are having their photo taken.
Some snaps of a beautiful young woman. Even her identity card lies there. No one has picked it up.
I want to gather up the pictures and take them somewhere where they can be saved, but I am hesitant to interfere with what is in effect a mass grave.
Later in the evening the rain pours down. I think of the photos disintegrating in the mud, and I regret my decision.
It dawns on me that perhaps the reason why no one picked up the photos or the ID card was because there was nobody left alive who knew the people. Such was the extent of the destruction in the area, it is quite possible – for the woman, for the boy, for the girl – that everyone who knew and cared about them, family, friends, neighbors, all are dead.