"Staying here will be hard," said Wang Fuoxiu, 51, waiting for word of a missing five-year-old grandson. "Leaving will also be hard ... For now, I just try to get through the day."
WAITING FOR THE SEARCHERS
Many remaining residents are waiting for troops to pull bodies from a primary school, where perhaps 400 or more children were trapped, many entangled in staircases, with faces frozen in the dread of their last moments, said searchers.
Living in a lean-to of plastic sheets, Liu Suqing said she wanted to be sure her late eight-year-old son, Leng Lianping, was buried carefully and respectfully, even if in a collective grave.
"After the quake, we ran to school and yelled 'Help! Help!', but no one came, and then we tried to find the children with our bare hands but didn't know where they were," said Liu, a 33-year-old shop assistant.
"Now I want him to know I was here when he comes out."
Many bodies were hauled up the hill unaccompanied by kin, but searchers said they were keeping DNA samples for identification. When families were there, they were taken up to the grave to bid farewell to their dead.
But after areas are scoured for bodies, troops are quickly moving to erase the ruins and blow up fatally damaged buildings. They have also built a temporary bridge strong enough to help haul away the mountains of shattered concrete.
Despite the grief, dirt and potential disease now pervading Yingxiu, some residents said moving would be unthinkable.
One old man still here said he would not consider even a temporary shift to Dujiangyan, the small city now some three hours' rough and muddy drive away that has taken many refugees.
"I could never handle the climate in Dujiangyan. It's different from here, hugely different," said farmer Wang Guangli, 73, who had strung up smoked bacon on the side of his shanty.
"I'll stay here until I die. I was lucky to live through the earthquake, so I must be meant to stay here."
But for others, the sight of the ruins was too much.
Liu Yunzhong, who survived the quake, said he came back only to look for documents from the company office he ran and shook his head in the direction of the hill graves and landslides.
"It's scary, and I don't want to hang around," he said, picking through the scattered papers and debris that fill the streets here. "I can't remember much now of what happened and I don't like being here now because it could force me to remember."
