CHINA:THE ARDUOUS process of rebuilding earthquake-struck swathes of Sichuan province continues, with hundreds of bodies being buried deep underground to stop possible epidemics and moves afoot to get children back to school in the areas worst-affected by the quake over three weeks ago.
In some places, life is returning, if not to quite back to normal, at least to something approaching normality - more than 500 students and teachers of a middle school in Wenchuan, at the epicentre of the 7.9-magnitude quake on May 12th, have moved in a mobile school and resumed classes.
However, for many parents of schoolchildren, no normality is possible. Scores of parents of students who died in the Juyuan Middle School were dragged away by riot police after they protested outside a courthouse in Dujiangyan, angry at the poor building standards in the school.
The parents had been kneeling in front of the courthouse yelling, "We want to sue". The quake destroyed 7,000 classrooms, and parents in Dujiangyan and at other schools where students were killed believe that the schools were badly built and did not stand a chance when the earthquake struck at 2.28pm, a time when many children were at school.
One of the most common rumours doing the rounds in the earthquake zone has been that such a large number of dead would lead to major disease outbreaks.
This has prompted at times eccentric, fearful behaviour, with taxi drivers refusing to fill their petrol tanks near the worst-affected areas saying the petrol had been contaminated, and people avoiding any food from the area.
A health ministry spokesman said that in cases where bodies crushed under buildings in the tremor could not be cremated, the corpses had been buried deep underground and far from water sources to prevent contamination.
"Theoretically, when there is a large movement of people, the risk increases for the spread of transmittable diseases. We have the ability and the confidence to guarantee there will be no epidemics after the disaster," Mao Qunan said in a web broadcast.
Tent camps had been disinfected and people warned of health risks, he added. The official death toll is 69,107, with 18,230 people still missing, the State Council said. The earth quake also left five million people homeless.
Distributing tents and setting up temporary housing before the onset of the rainy season is a priority. Football stadiums and other public areas around the zone are filled with tents, but with heavy rain approaching, the focus now shifts to making pre-fabricated housing, which is less inclined to leak in heavy rain.
The earthquake zone is a hive of activity, with the centre of co-ordination the Sichuan capital, Chengdu. Soldiers continue to unblock the roads around the province, clear rubble and deliver food to communities still isolated by the quake. The soldiers are backed up by squads of volunteers from all over China and abroad, who are travelling the area delivering food and water to refugees from the quake.
The relief effort remains a hazardous task. A military helicopter carrying survivors and rescuers which crashed three days ago was still missing in the wilds of Sichuan. The Mi-171 transport was carrying 19 people, 14 of them people injured in the quake, when it crashed in fog near Wenchuan on Saturday.
Teams of engineers are also trying to clear "quake lakes" formed by landslides following the quake. At Tangjiashan, a lake formed by the landslide above Beichuan, the water level had risen to dangerously high levels, threatening flooding in towns and villages downstream, but troops were able to clear a channel for water to flow away.
The earthquake is still top news in China, and so far donations from home and abroad have reached 41.7 billion yuan (€380 million).
Doing your bit for the earthquake victims is seen as a matter of doing your duty, and corporate donors are stepping up with major donations, both of cash and expertise.
There are events going on all over the country to raise funds - US pop group Black Eyed Peas are holding a concert in Shanghai to raise money for the victims.
In the devastated county of Wenchuan, building workers travelled from southern Guangdong province to build a large temporary school.
College entrance exams are coming up all over China this month, a big event when everyone focuses on the crucial three-day matriculation examinations for entry to university.
The main focus of the new school building in Wenchuan is to allow 300 students preparing for the entrance exams to resume their studies.