Quake Lake Shake And Bake

It's kind of a masterwork of engineering that Chinese soldiers were able to divert water to lessen the imminent danger of flooding to over a million residents. But they had to divert it through the destroyed city of Beichuan, and survivors had to wash their possessions and even the corpses of their neighbors fly by in the process.

Tuesday's flooding brought more heartache to the displaced. Many said valuables were now lost for good.

"It began flooding early this morning," said shop assistant Zhu Yunhui, 37, who lost loved ones in the quake and said she had kept many tens of thousands of yuan in her home. "Now we can never go back. This is heartbreaking."

Damage in Beichuan from the tremor was so extensive that authorities have decided to rebuild the town at a site dozens of kilometers away and to make the original county seat an earthquake memorial.

The brutal efficiency of this effort is intriguing. China has literally buried the past, washed it away, and rebuilt for the last few decades, so in in many ways it was a symbolic event.