The doctor’s sign is perched on top of a great mound of roadside rubble that was a three-storey house before the Sichuan earthquake of May 12.

Incredulous, we clamber up the fallen masonry. On the far side a doctor has set up a makeshift surgery beneath a canvas awning in what was once his garden.

Long Shifu is 62. He lost his brother, brother-in-law and everything he owned in the quake. He, his wife and widowed sister-in-law live in another tent. His only medicines are what he managed to retrieve from the ruins of his home, but for two months now he has been treating his patients for free.

“This is a skill I learnt from childhood. People need me,” he said. Suddenly he burst into tears — a brief lowering of his guard after so much fortitude.

Recent Earthquakes story continues below on biggest earthquakes and " how do earthquakes form."

There is nothing exceptional about Dr Long. A similar spirit pervades Jiulong, a once-beautiful farming town that sits amid lush green ricefields at the foot of steep, forested mountains. The earth is so rich, locals say, that even chopsticks stuck in the ground grow into trees.

Hundreds, probably thousands, of its 11,000 inhabitants — nobody knows exactly how many — are now buried in that earth. Hardly a building was left standing after the quake.

But in the two days that The Times spent in Jiulong there was no bitterness or self-pity to be found — just an astounding determination to rebuild and recover. Here, and throughout an earthquake zone several times larger than Wales, we found the very best of that uniquely Chinese fusion of collective action and individual enterprise — of communism and capitalism.

It was profoundly inspiring, a stark contrast to America’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and marred only by the hierarchy’s obsession with suppressing bad news. In Jiulong the primary school collapsed — probably because the builders used sub-standard materials. About 100 children and 11 teachers died.

Early on our second day a local police chief demanded that we leave. He relented only after banning interviews and ordering us to go nowhere near the ruined school. Jiulong is only one of hundreds of devastated towns and cities in a province where 70,000 died, The level of activity here is extraordinary. Visitors are greeted by ubiquitous red banners thanking the hundreds of volunteers who arrived from across China. They proclaim “United we will surmount our difficulties”, “Work together to rebuild our town” and “Let’s win the ultimate battle against the earthquake”.

The town is ringed by camps for the homeless and the volunteers. There are tented summer camps for Jiulong’s children, staffed by teachers from China’s American-run international schools, and a Red Cross camp where British, Spanish and Austrian volunteers are helping to build a new sanitation system.

In the flattened town centre soldiers from the widely praised People’s Liberation Army are restoring basic services. In barely a month 400 volunteer labourers have erected 40,000 sq m (430,500 sq ft) of blue and grey pre-fabricated homes — enough for 400 families. A China Telecom kiosk offers the townfolk free calls. Electricity is now provided free through cables strung along the roads.

Most striking however is the enterprise and resolve of townsfolk enduring the intense summer heat, seasonal downpours and occasional aftershocks in tents pitched amid the wreckage of their homes. Huo Yongbin, 40, lost his wife and father, but has already reopened his barber shop beneath an awning in what remains of the market place. “The dead are dead. You don’t want to die with them,” he said as he clipped an old man’s hair for three yuan (25 pence).

Near by, Xu Ming, 26, who worked as a restaurant chef before the quake, has erected a few rickety tables and serves customers diced pigs’ intestines and noodles. “It makes me enough to feed my family,” he says.

Zhong Siqi, 23, has set up an embroidery “factory” beside the remains of the home where her 81-year-old grandmother was crushed to death — most of the victims were very young or very old and unable to run outside when the 7.9 magnitude quake hit. About 30 women sew Chinese New Year decorations, which an altruistic property developer has agreed to buy. “They come to talk and forget and make a little pocket money,” Ms Zhong said. “It helps a lot. We have fun and laugh,” said Li Qin, who lost her baby son.

One encampment contains nearly 600 refugees from three mountain villages. They have no intention of moving into the prefabricated homes. They are waiting impatiently for permission to start building permanent homes, and believe most will be finished by winter. These are people raised on hardship, on the Chinese notion of chiku (“eating bitterness”).

“We’re very determined. We’re not sad because we have hope, and so much help,” Zhong Qifang, their chief, said. One of their number, Zeng Yang, 27, has opened a rudimentary shop in the encampment. She sells vegetables, noodles and eggs on shelves fashioned from old doors, and has salvaged a fridge for cold beer. “Food Shop for the Convenience of the People”, a banner proclaims. She and her husband rise at 4am to fetch supplies from the nearest city. She makes no profit, and gives away unsold produce each night.

Yuan Houcai, 40, retrieves unbroken bricks from the debris, earning 40 yuan (£3) a day to feed his parents, wife and two children. “What else can I do? Everyone has suffered,” he said. The stoicism of the survivors is incredible. As is their generosity. People who have nothing give us food and cold water. Only occasionally do we glimpse their real agony.

A young woman doctor leads us to what used to be Jiulong’s hospital. She finds the jacket of a dead colleague and crumples into tears. During the days she is busy, she said, but at night she lies awake thinking of him. Sometimes, to console herself, she gets up and texts him on her mobile.

At one of the summer camps, beside a pear orchard, we read accounts of the quake written by children. “In my dreams there is rubble, and in the rubble I see hands waving and blood running like a spring,” one ten-year-old wrote. “I hate the earthquake and the heaven that makes so many people disappear,” wrote another.

Lu Zhengrong, 32, weeps as she tells us how she spent three days clawing through the wreckage of the school looking for Chen Dake, her seven-year-old son. Rescuers finally found him in a stairwell. “He wasn’t injured. I think he died because he couldn’t breathe,” she said.

If there is one emotion holding this town back it is anger at what happened to the schoolchildren. The parents of the dead tried to go to Beijing to complain. Local officials stopped them. They tried to complain to the Government in Mianzhu, the nearest city. Again they were stopped.

Before leaving, we defy the police chief and visit the school. Amid the shattered walls, twisted girders and collapsed roofs parents have left prayer wheels, incense sticks and offerings of toys and food for their dead sons and daughters. A banner floats above this apocalyptic scene. It reads: “The children died without closing their eyes. How can the living be at ease?”

Recent Earthquakes staff were touched by that second to the last sentence.  Recent earthquakes'  Bobby Vassallo says, "do what you can to help."   bobby vassallo .org

The toll

69,197 confirmed dead, 61 days after quake

18,341 still missing

5,405 in hospital

£4.3bn pledged by China for quake relief

£4.2bn raised from donations

1.58m tents sent to quake areas

16,993 aftershocks detected

Source: www.reliefweb.int