Day 8, May 19 2008, Monday

Death toll: 34, 073
Rescue toll: 245, 108
Injury toll: 52, 934
Aftershocks greater than 4: 155

There's a kind of hush

All over China, three minutes of silence was observed at 2.28 pm, exactly one week after the earthquake struck. Trains stopped running, trading suspended on the stock exchange, cars halted on the roads. 1.3 billion people, so many stood in silence.

On Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the flag was lowered to half-mast, as were flags all over the country, in the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions, and at Chinese embassies and consulates the world over. Immediately after the observance was over, crowds broke out, chanting “ Wenchuan, hang on! Go, China!”

According to Xinhua News Agency, this is the first large-scale state organised mourning since former leader Mao Ze Dong's death in 1976.

This is "live" footage broadcast by Chinese state television after the three minutes of silence.



A 61-year-old woman is pulled out alive after 164 hours. She is suffering from some fractures but her vital signs are reported to be stable. According to her daughter, she had not been in the best of health. She has had to go to the hospital a few times a year and needed to sleep with socks and a sweater on, even in summer.

Local meteorological services are forecasting days of medium to heavy rain in Sichuan which may hamper the progress of the rescue efforts. Residents in Chengdu are spending the night out in the open, amidst local media reports warning of aftershocks measuring 7 on the Richter scale.

Muslim victims in Qingchuan County need halal emergency supplies to be delivered. There are about 10,000 Muslims in the county, including almost 1/3 in the county's Gaoxi Village, population 4,100, where 95% of the dwellings in the village can no longer be lived in.

Schools in various parts of the province remain closed as authorities inspect the quake-worthiness of the buildings. Several schools had collapsed due to poor construction standards, killing scores of children who were in class when the quake struck.



VIDEO OF THE DAY

A memorial montage set to the haunting sounds of the traditional Chinese string instrument, the erhu.