Free Republic

"It's all new", said the shirtless man who shared a small quadrant of shade with me behind our bus. He was pointing with his cigarette at a series of white three story buildings directly in front of us. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and a sweltering sun beat down unmercifully upon our vulnerable position on the side of the road. This was the third time that our bus had broken down in just a few hours and I was starting to wonder if I would make it back to Chengdu that day. "What was it like before?" I...

An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale has hit China's Sichuan province. The tremor was felt across the entire region - shaking buildings in the capital, Beijing, as well as the Thai capital, Bangkok, and Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. US Geological Survey said the quake struck 57 miles north-west of the city of Chengdu at 2.29pm local time (6.28am GMT). Some 10 million people live in Chengdu.