[游记]一个外国记者得地震日记（转华尔街日报）

Around midnight there was an aftershock, as if the building had been hit by a sharp blast. I didnt run out of the building, but I did pack my backpack. I guess my instinct to get organized first would have killed me in a bigger quake. I then left my bag packed and put a glass of water on the edge of the dresser as a homemade earthquake alert.

The next morning, I headed out with another journalist to try to find a way to Beichuan, where we had heard at least half of the residents had died. Early government death tolls indicated about a third of those killed in the quake were from Beichuan. None of the local taxis would take us -- the cars run on compressed natural gas and the drivers said they couldnt get enough fuel.

At Mianyangs city hall, rescuers had set up a headquarters and a volunteer registration center. A city official came out and talked to us in perfect English. (He had lived in Canada for three years.) Hed returned from Beichuan at 5 a.m. and looked tired and drawn.

The two mountains around the valley collapsed, he said, mimicking the motion with his hands and then giving us his report: At least half of Beichuans people were missing. They had found 2,000 bodies so far and a few thousand survivors. The army was working to clear the road into town but still had about six miles of landslides to get past.

We made our way to Mianyangs main gymnasium. Outside, hundreds of survivors were hiking across muddy lanes and pouring out of flatbed trucks. About 10,000 refugees were already inside. One weathered-looking woman with a bloodied bandage on her head rummaged through a pile of donated clothing. Shed come from Beichuan with her husband and two-year-old son.

We ran like mad, she said. Anyone still in a building is dead.

Finally we found a taxi that would take us to Beichuan. The road wove past the poorer outskirts of Mianyang toward the mountains. Only a few miles out, the destruction was worse: We saw rows of shattered cinderblock that were once buildings, their roofs caved in and people lining up with buckets next to water trucks.

More than halfway to Beichuan, police at a roadblock stopped our car. Only rescue vehicles and those with special permission could go farther. We left our taxi and joined a group of four farmers from Henan province who had been traveling for two straight days hoping to help out. We hiked up the winding road past dazed survivors and villages that seemed made of broken shingles and snapped wood.

An hour later, another roadblock. Police were letting Chinese reporters past, but not foreign media. Officials from the local foreign-affairs office, a government agency in charge of foreign media in the region, said they were worried about our safety. Finally they relented.

Past the roadblock, every village we saw had been flattened. We passed a body wrapped in a tarp. Two men pushed a bicycle, a wrapped body draped across it. One arm dangled, leaving a path in the dust.

We walked uphill with two men who had strapped crates of bottled water and food to bicycles. They lived in the coastal boomtown of Shenzhen, where they ran a small company. They had family in nearby villages and were intent on bringing them some relief.

Closer to the Beichuan county seat, the road entered a narrow valley. Hundreds of soldiers and paramilitary police sat in trucks or ate bowls of instant noodles, waiting to be deployed. Onions, potatoes and giant winter melons were stacked next to the road.