For 10 long years, Sang Jun has been clinging to a promise. A solemn promise made by former premier Wen Jiabao when he visited Mianzhu to survey the damage after the quake in 2008.

The 49-year-old pig farmer’s son Sang Xingpeng had been killed alongside 125 other pupils when Fuxin No.2 Primary School collapsed during the disaster that devastated their town.

"Two days after the quake, Wen Jiabao came to Hanwang township. He stood on the rubble telling us to go home to wait for the news," Sang recounted. "An explanation would be given so that our children would not have died in vain, he told us."

Sang is still waiting.

Then-premier Wen Jiabao comforts a quake survivor in the town of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county.

The bereaved parent is one voice representing thousands of others who lost their only child to the magnitude-8 earthquake that shook Sichuan province a decade ago.

Officials have blamed the extreme shockwaves for bringing down thousands of schoolhouses across the province and causing extensive structural damage to the buildings. But the parents say many of their children’s lives could have been saved had the schoolhouses not been so shoddily built.

Fuxing No.2 Primary School has been described as "the textbook example of China’s ‘tofu projects’". The term "tofu projects" was first coined in 1998 by then-premier Zhu Rongji when he said during a tour of flood dykes on the Yangtze River that the constructions were as flimsy and porous as tofu dregs.

After the quake, these collapsed buildings were referred to as examples of China’s "tofu projects". The term "tofu projects" was first coined in 1998 by then-premier Zhu Rongji when he said during a tour of flood dykes on the Yangtze River that the constructions were as flimsy and porous as tofu dregs.

The bereaved parents’ persistent petitions over the past 10 years have gained little attention, however, bringing them only round-the-clock surveillance, police intimidation and even detention.

To outsiders, the quake anniversary is only an occasion to look back at the events that played out in Sichuan years ago. But the parents who were robbed of their young children in the disaster relive the trauma of May 12 every single day, civil rights activist Tan Zuoren said.

"Why won’t the parents give up fighting? They press on not just to fulfil their emotional need, but also because they simply have to see justice served," Tan said. "They are not after financial compensation. They simply want an official apology."

Tan, 64, was an anesthetist before he turned to activism. He was jailed for five years in 2010 on state subversion charges after leading an independent civil investigation into poorly built schoolhouses following the quake.

Sang has previously also been detained for a year for his activism over the matter. Today, he continues to lead a group of about 100 parents in their thrice-yearly appeal for an official investigation into the substandard school buildings. But the number of parent participants have been dwindling, he said.

Only about 175 pupils out of 301 made it out alive when Fuxin No.2 Primary School collapsed. All other buildings around the school remained standing, Sang said. The grieving parents later found no reinforcement bars in the debris. Concrete pieces among the rubble also quickly crumbled when they were picked up, he added.











A civilian-led investigation found evidence showing how the schools were built with substandard materials.

"If this was completely the result of a natural disaster, I would have nothing to say… but how can we rest when the government insists that the school’s collapse was caused only by the shockwaves from the quake," he asked.

At least these bereaved parents managed to bury their own children. Others in Beichuan county can do nothing as their children’s bodies remain under the rubble to this day.

The old Beichuan county, a three-hour drive from the provincial capital of Chengdu, has been transformed into a preserved monument and a destination for millions of tourists to remember those who died. The area was hit the hardest during the quake.

























Collapsed buildings in the old Beichuan town, one of the hardest-hit areas, have been preserved to commemorate victims. The Beichuan Earthquake Museum was built on the site of Beichuan Middle School which was destroyed in the quake.

At the site ‒ the crisp air silent but for the occasional chirp of a bird ‒ stands a giant tombstone. People who visit place flowers by the stone and bow to pay their respects to the thousands of children buried beneath it. Others crushed by collapsed government and commercial buildings have their names and pictures displayed on big boards built beside the ruins.

Some victims, however, have been forgotten.

More than 1,000 pupils of Beichuan High School were killed when the school crumbled in the quake, and almost half of them remain buried deep under the rubble to this day, according to victims’ parents and activists. Tan, the activist, has described the school as "the textbook example of China’s 'tofu projects'".

To completely erase all geographical and landscape features within the proximity of Beichuan High School ... and to build a museum on top of it is extremely cruel and inhumane. ‒ Tan Zuoren, activist

The site of the ruined school was converted into the Beichuan Earthquake Museum, while about 500 of its pupils who died were cremated and collectively buried in the museum after their DNAs were matched with their relatives but there was no sign pointing to their burial place.

Activist Tan said the museum was the result of the political ideology of Zhou Yongkang, former Sichuan provincial party chief and state security tsar before he was toppled by corruption charges years later.

"To completely erase all geographical and landscape features within the proximity of Beichuan High School so that people can't recognise it and to build a museum on top of it is extremely cruel and inhumane," Tan said.

"There are still more than 400 kids that have yet to be dug out from the site. How can you change everything and build a museum on top of it to glorify the party's leadership?"

The repeated calls to launch an official investigation into the schoolhouses’ safety and to process lawsuits filed to sue school heads and contractors have all been ignored, the parents say.

Bereaved parents are taken away by authorities as they demand an explanation from the government over their children’s deaths.

The civilian investigation Tan led found that the quake damaged about 7,000 schools across Sichuan. Of those, 2,000 were severely damaged. Twenty of them were thought to have been shoddily built, according to the probe.

Tan said it made no sense for the government to invest heavily to crack down on protesting parents rather than to address their needs for a fair investigation and hold responsible those at fault.

"Those who persist in seeking justice are treated like criminals," he said. "This is the biggest post-disaster catastrophe, and that’s why many of them are unable to move on from the pain."

We have been met with nothing but cruelty. If the government had been more humane towards us, it might have been easier for us to move on ‒ A grieving father

Beichuan’s bereaved parents say requests to bury their children’s cremated remains and to set up a communal tombstone nearer to their homes have also been denied.

A 52-year-old father who lost his 18-year-old son at the school said he would not give up fighting for his son to be remembered until the day he dies.

"For the past 10 years, we have been met with nothing but cruelty. If the government had been more humane towards us, it might have been easier for us to move on," said the man, who asked not to be named for fear of falling afoul of authorities.

Sang, the pig farmer from Mianzhu, said that with the earthquake’s 10th anniversary approaching, local officials recently warned him against speaking to the media.

"I was told I would have to pay the price for what I’ve done," he said. "Well, let the world know how much of a price we have paid in our search for justice."

But not every bereaved parent is as steadfast as Sang.

Zhang Jing, a Beichuan mother who lost her three-year-old daughter when the girl’s kindergarten building was crushed under the crumbling school next door, recently trashed all her petition materials. The materials included long lists of victims and pieces of evidence collected to prove that the schoolhouses had been poorly constructed.

"The government will never give us justice so I have no use for these materials any more," she said.

Still, Tan is determined to continue helping those who press on for justice.

"We can't give up or there will be nothing left but for despair. Achievement comes from accumulated progression, even at its tiniest. This is about basic morality and the human conscience," he said.

"What we are doing now has nothing to do with state subversion. What is real subversion is [the government] politicising everything rather than upholding social and judicial justice and equality.