Photographs by Alan Chin for Newsweek
At 2:28pm on Monday, May 19, 2008, exactly one week after a magnitude 8.0 earthquake rocked China’s western Sichuan Province, the biggest country on earth came to a halt. Motorists honked, trains and ships sounded their horns, and this nation of more than 1 billion people paused to remember the victims of the devastating quake, whose numbers continued to rise. The official death toll on Monday stood at 34,073, but another 40,000 were thought to be missing or buried. And while rescuers were scrambling closer and closer to the epicenter of the quake, which had been cut off by massive landslides, weather forecasters were warning that heavy rain could impede their progress and perhaps cause dozens of reservoirs to overflow. The day’s moment of silence was a remarkable display of solidarity in a country where mass displays are usually frowned upon. It was also a moment of quiet foreboding, for tragedies that may yet unfold.
Photographer Alan Chin, on assignment for Newsweek, recorded these images at Beichuan, one of the districts worst hit by the quake.
