China rescuers seek survivors in hard-hit town

"She had the will to live," said Xu, a demobilized soldier and now an office worker in the eastern city of Tangshan. "I'm just exhausted."

Peng Zhijun, 46, who suffered fractured bones and slight injuries, lived by eating cigarettes and paper napkins and drinking his urine, the Xinhua News Agency said. Peng said more than 10 others had been buried with him but died because they did not listen to his advice to drink their urine, according to the report.

Others were freed elsewhere in the disaster area, a mountainous area the size of Maryland. In Yingxiu, at the other end of the quake-zone yet like Beichuan one of the worst-affected areas, two people were pulled from the rubble, one a man whose right foot was partly missing and covered in a bloody bandage.

White-helmeted soldiers spent hours swarming over the debris of a three-story building on the grounds of a fertilizer factory in the town of Yinghua, to the south, near Shifang. Dozens of soldiers freed a single survivor, described by bystanders as a 50-year-old driver. He was quickly wrapped in a floral blanket and placed on a stretcher. As rescuers carried him to an ambulance, applause rang out.

The moment of celebration was brief -shortly afterward, rescuers pulled out yet another body, which was placed in a yellow bag and loaded on a truck.

In what had been Beichuan's commercial center, alleys of restaurants, convenience stores and shoe and clothing shops were impassable with debris, overturned cars, and scattered merchandise.

People scavenged the ruins for food and other usable items. In one section, six bodies covered in quilts lay on mattresses or bed frames.

"It's no use," said one volunteer as he searched fruitlessly for survivors. "This is a city of the dead."