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New Town Springing Up in Quake-Hit Province
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Government officials are trying to come up with a governing mechanism for the new neighborhoods. Chen and her family live in an area of the sprawling camp known only as the Registration Department Temporary Refugee Area, named for the government department in Mianyang city that is responsible for managing it. Her area sits next to the Construction Department Temporary Refugee Area.
Feng Guan Ming, 43, is a vice bureau chief of the Registration Department, and he works in 40-hour shifts with other vice chiefs of his department to manage this area, home now to 2,342 people from three villages. Feng said about 50 people serve on a self-governing commission for the refugees, with different committees for concerns such as security, dispute settlement and disease prevention.
One of the commission's first decisions was to build a playground for the 71 children under age 6 who live in their area. He's not sure when a school will be built or how people living here will find work and start to get back to normal routines.
"Everything had to be done in such a rush," he said.
Yang Xing Gui, 46, Communist Party secretary for Yuanxing village, five or six mountains away, arrived here two days ago and said he has had time only to count people from the village and unload supplies. "Some people are very upset about not being able to return home," he said. "But many feel lucky to be alive."
Those who want to work can sign on with a construction crew and help clear land and put up the new homes. Luo Ying Ping, a manager with a local construction bureau, recruited about 100 people living in the tents. "They will get paid, but we don't yet know how much," he said as he supervised a dozen women using hoes and pickaxes to help level the corners of a field after the bulldozer's first few passes.
"We plan to train them to build these houses," Wang added.
As if to punctuate Wang's point, after the construction crew finished the first line of houses, a few men strung up next to them a red banner on bamboo poles. It read, "China Construction, Eighth Bureau, Second Company, will build beautiful homes together with refugees here."
Researcher Liu Liu contributed to this report.
