A Day of Mourning for the Victims of Yushu Earthquake
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| Chinese national flag flies at half-mast to mourn for the victims of Yushu earthquake, in the Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, capital of China. April 21 |
National flags flew at half-mast at government agencies in the Chinese capital Wednesday and all public entertainment was suspended.
At Tian'anmen Square in downtown Beijing, thousands of people watched the national flag being hoisted to full height and then lowered to half-mast at about 5:33 a.m.
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the State Council, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the Central Military Commission, Chinese embassies around the world and other authorities all flew the national flag at half-mast.
Wednesday's issues of People's Daily, China Youth Daily, 21st Century Business Herald and other major nationwide newspapers were printed in black and white to mark the day of mourning.
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| Soldiers and local residents pay silent tribute to the victims of Yushu earthquake during a mourning ceremony at King Gesar's Square in Gyegu Town of Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu, northwest China's Qinghai Province, April 21, 2010 |
At least 1,000 people gathered in front of Gyegu's town hall Wednesday morning to mourn those killed in last week's devastating earthquake.
The mourners, representing all the different ethnic groups in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu, in northwest China's Qinghai Province, wore white paper flowers, a traditional symbol of mourning in China, and stood in silent tribute at 10 a.m..
The national flag in the square was lowered to half-mast and the national anthem played.
Even the rescuers, still working all-out in the search for the 175 people still missing, stopped for three minutes to mourn.
A banner with white Chinese characters reading "In memory of our compatriots killed in the Yushu earthquake" hung in the town hall square.
The 7.1-magnitude quake devastated Yushu's largely Tibetan community when it struck at 7:49 a.m. last Wednesday.
As of Tuesday, 2,064 were confirmed dead and 12,135 were injured.
About 80 children from a Yushu orphanage stood out among the mourners at a racecourse in Yushu County where multitudes of quake survivors are living in makeshift tents.
Dressed in donated white jackets, the children were quiet throughout the mourning ceremony which featured a silent tribute, wailing sirens and horns, as well as sutra chanting by more than 60 Tibetan monks who'd come from Sichuan Province.
Chinese diplomats in overseas embassies and consulates including the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria, Chinese Consulate in Johannesburg and Chinese Consulate in Cape Town, held commemoration ceremonies Wednesday to mourn their compatriots killed one week ago in the devastating Qinghai earthquake.
Overseas Chinese students, emigrants and representatives of Chinese companies posted abroad also joined the ceremonies to express their condolences for the 2,064 people killed in the 7.1-magnitude earthquake on April 14.
The Chinese flag was lowered to half mast in all Chinese embassies and consulates overseas on Wednesday, during which the whole China carried out national mourning activities for the victims of the earthquake that was centered in Yushu County in western Qinghai province.
People paid tribute with three minutes of silence in front of overseas Chinese embassies and consulates as sirens and horns wailed in grief to commemorate the dead and the more than 12,000 others injured in the region.
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