Wait and hope. These two words deeply impressed me 14 years ago when I first read Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. I was in my fifth year at high school and had never witnessed any disasters or tragedies.

In the following years, I witnessed the SARS outbreak in 2003 that swept Beijing where I grew up, the devastating earthquake in 2008 that claimed nearly 90,000 lives in Sichuan province, and the catastrophic mudslide in 2010 that almost erased a county in northwestern China, but I had never imagined that one day I would be standing in the center of a disaster assuming the responsibility of telling my readers what had happened and is happening in the epicenter of the April 20 earthquake in Lushan, Sichuan.

Now seven days have passed and I have interviewed volunteers, NGO workers, officers and soldiers of the People's Liberation Army in Longmen township of Lushan county, which was worst hit by the earthquake. I saw them sweat while carrying food and bottled water for local people living in shelters. I followed them to remote, muddy villages on the mountain to offer medical care and psychological comfort. I was moved by those residents who suffered in the earthquake but who never complained and even made food for volunteers and reporters they did not know.