REUTERS - Mourners crowded ruins andgraves in southwest
China on Tuesday, recalling one year since an earthquake
shattered the region as President Hu Jintao praised the
response to the calamity as a model of patriotic resolve.

In Sichuan province, where the earthquake rippled out from
Wenchuan County at 2:28 p.m. local time on May 12 last year,
survivors and relatives gathered at devastated towns to burn
incense and leave wreaths for lost loved ones and to lament the
more than 80,000 people killed.

In Beichuan, a valley town wiped out by the quake and
nowadays usually empty and sealed off by guards, thousands of
locals and visitors poured in after police opened the gates.

Many lit incense and ritual paper money intended to comfort
the dead and the ashes swirled in the blustery air.

President Hu Jintao told foreign ambassadors visiting the
quake area on Monday night that the disaster galvanised his
nation, and he praised the fast steps to rebuilding the region.

"Confronted with this immense disaster, the masses of Chinese
people and military were as one, forming a fortress of unified
resolve," Hu told the ambassadors in Dujiangyan, a city near the
provincial capital Chengdu, the China News Service reported.

But for many families of the dead, the anniversary was a
painful re-encounter with the frantic scenes of 12 months ago,
when bewildered residents and ill-equipped soldiers struggled to
rescue survivors trapped in homes, offices and schools.

"Today is so sad, so heart-breaking. I didn't want to come
back here because the place brings back so many bad memories,"
said Zhou Caigui, a Beichuan native who said he lost over 30
relatives in the disaster.

In Hanwang, a factory town ruined by the quake, mourners
gathered at a mass grave on a nearby hill they said holds
thousands of victims, including workers and schoolchildren killed
when their aged workshops and classrooms collapsed.

Parents of children killed in the Dongqi Middle School in
Hanwang, like bereaved parents in many parts of the quake area,
said neglect and poor standards contributed to the deaths.

That fury stoked protests in the wake of the wake, but police
guarding levelled schools and outspoken parents are likely to
stifle any such attempts on the anniversary.

The Hanwang school had been officially classified as
dangerously dilapidated years before the quake, but wrangling
over funds delayed plans to move the classrooms, according to
parents and Chinese newspaper reports from last year.

"We came to remember our son. But this was not just a natural
disaster. He died from people's actions," said Fu Xingneng, who
said he believed his son Fu Cheng was buried in the mass grave.
"We just hope that lesson isn't forgotten."