(图文无关 REUTERS/Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)
这是一篇摘自英国每日电讯网站的新闻特写，原标题是China earthquake: family buries boy by roadside as region mourns dead。文章从记者在四川地震灾区看到的心酸一幕写起，很真实地还原了灾难给生命个体和家庭带去的苦痛。
China earthquake: family buries boy by roadside as region mourns dead
When 16-year-old Wu Jie went to bed on Friday night, he harboured dreams of becoming an artist and lifting his family from rural poverty.
By Tom Phillips
Twenty-four hours later he was dead, his mangled body sprawled out under a red and blue tarpaulin at the edge of a country road in a remote corner of southwest China.
A handwritten placard above his final resting place read: "The blood and tears are as moist as the earth beneath the coffin."
"He was a nice boy. He was very obedient," wept his 38-year-old mother, Yue Yincui, as her grieving family huddled in the darkness around the improvised roadside shrine. "He was my only son."
The teenager is one of at least 203 people who are known to have lost their lives when China's worst earthquake in three years struck Sichuan province on Saturday morning, at just after 8am.
这里开始从个体转向整体的地震受灾情况。在地震发生当天，几乎所有的媒体都是用倒金字塔格式撰写新闻消息，尤其是地点、死亡人数、事件、时间，可以迅速让读者知晓事件梗概，不过在后续报道中如果反复地出现倒金字塔就会显得单调。这篇新闻的导语后移很好地解决了吸引读者和交代事实的关系。
"The whole family ran outside," his mother recalled, as relatives lit incense and burned paper money at her son's midnight wake. "We thought we were all safe. But then we couldn't find him. We tried to rescue him but we couldn't get in through the door. When we finally dragged him out he was dead."
On Sunday, one day after the 7-magnitude earthquake brought mayhem to this isolated corner of the Chinese countryside, thousands of rescue workers were still scrambling to reach the villages closest to its epicentre. State media said at least 11,500 people had been injured, 1,000 of those seriously.
继续交代地震之后的救援和伤亡情况。
In Gucheng village a bright red Chinese flag sprouted from the rubble of a family home, marking the spot where three locals were crushed to death. In Cunguang, dozens of houses had crumbled and the asphalt road had been carved into two equal pieces. "It sounded like fireworks exploding under our feet," recalled Wang Huajui, a 70-year-old local.
All along the meandering country roads linking these villages pleas for help could be seen, scrawled onto pieces of cardboard. "No food. No water. Nobody has asked about us," read one.
But few places appeared to have suffered more than Shengli village in Sichuan's Taiping county, near the quake's epicentre.
Until last week, Shengli was a bucolic rural community, its streets lined with elegant wooden homes boasting spectacular mountain views.
Now, the village has been transformed into a refugee camp. Nearly all of its 2,000-odd residents have been driven from their shattered homes and forced to set up camp in plazas outside the local police station and the HQ of the Communist Party's village committee.
"Everyone is on the streets now," said Li Zhihui, a 40-year-old woman whose house had been destroyed 24 hours earlier. "We can't stay in our homes.
Here it is relatively safe at least."
Hardly a building in Shengli has been left unscathed. Car workshops, grocery stores and street bars have been reduced to heaps of rubble and timber. Family homes have been ripped open, the inhabitants' private lives now on public view with birdcages, sofas, mattresses and dirty laundry spewing out into the street. On Sunday, a satellite dish swung idly in the wind from one cracked shopfront.
Shengli's four-floor school – which suffered major damage in 2008 during an earthquake that claimed some 70,000 lives – has fared no better the second-time around: a gaping hole has been punched through its front wall as if by tank fire. A nearby branch of the Sichuan Rural Credit Union has had its windows blown out. Shards of deep blue glass litter the pavement outside.
"That is my home," lamented 75-year-old Yang Qinggu, pointing frantically to a tangle of wood and concrete opposite Shengli's police station.
As he spoke, a strong aftershock shook the village sending bystanders running and threatening to bring what remained of his home crashing down.
"It has happened 20 times now," Mr Yang said nervously after the ground had stopped rumbling.
At the hospital – one of the few buildings that appeared relatively undamaged – Shengli's walking wounded packed an outdoor triage centre. Dr Su Ruiyang said the hospital had admitted 160 victims. Three had died.
"Most of them are bone fractures, head trauma and injuries to the lower back," he said, as a middle-aged woman was rushed into a nearby tent for treatment.
Yang Wenbo, a 26-year-old rescue worker conducting house-to-house searches, said that while the damage was extreme, the village may have escaped lightly. "We still don't know how many died. [But with this level of damage] there should be more injured and dead. Every house is damaged in some way." Other, even more remote communities, that are still virtually inaccessible by road, may not have been so lucky.
"Nobody really knows what is happening in there," admitted Sheng Jian, a rescue-worker who was heading to some of the most isolated areas.
By Sunday afternoon, some 18,000 troops had poured into the region, clearing boulders – some as large as houses – from the roads and setting up tent communities for the displaced. China's state news agency Xinhua said the military had orders to "reach every village and all households" in their search for survivors.
During a visit to the region, premier Li Keqiang reportedly told victims: "Don't be sad, we will rebuild after this disaster and your new homes will be even better than before." But for now, Shengli's residents are still counting their losses.
关于领导人的新闻放在了最后，这在英语灾难新闻中是非常常见的处理方式。
On a cabbage-patch overlooking its deserted school, the putrefying body of 30-year-old Li Pingping, lay under a tartan tarpaulin that villagers had pinned down with fist-sized rocks.
"I knew her," said Wang Shirong, a local farmer. "She couldn't run fast enough."
Additional reporting by Zhao Rongkun
（图文无关：REUTERS/Stringer）
注释：
obedient 听话的
improvised 临时的
burned paper money 烧纸钱
meandering country roads 蜿蜒的田间路
scrawl 涂写
bucolic 田园的
satellite dish 电视天线（俗称大锅盖）
dirty laundry 脏衣服
Odd 大约，左右 （ How many pages was it, 500 odd?它多少页，500左右？）
troops 士兵
putrefying 腐烂的
shopfront：商店门面，商店橱窗
cabbage patch：白菜地
Fared no better the second-time around : 遭遇，进展
Fare better 情况稍好一些
The Democrats fared better than expected and actually picked up a few seats.
Reduce：变成 If something is changed to a different or less complicated form, it is reduced to that form.
例：
All the buildings in the town have been reduced to rubble.镇上所有的建筑都变成了瓦砾。
The fire reduced the house to ashes. 这场火灾把那所房子化为灰烬.