China evacuees shelter on Rich and Happy Mountain

By Lindsay Beck

MIANYANG, China (Reuters) - Rich and Happy Mountain is teeming with people but China's earthquake survivors are feeling neither prosperous nor joyful.

The hillside park on the edge of Mianyang city has become a temporary home for thousands moved from low-lying areas over fears that landslide-blocked rivers near the epicenter of the quake could burst their banks.

A tent city has taken over the park. Residents fill every available space, including the rides.

The "Flying Cars" have been commandeered by families who draped netting over the buggies for shelter and are now sitting and sleeping inside.

"We're all facing this on our own," says a woman surnamed Lei, who arrived on Friday. "We manage our own food. We have to rely on ourselves to work things out here."

She gestures to several identical tents where she says an extended family of about 20 people is living. The group has rigged up a series of power bars connected to the electrical source for the "Flying Cars".

Others use two electrical power points inside the park's public toilets for their rice cookers.

Authorities say the evacuation was necessary to prevent any secondary disaster after the May 12 quake that killed nearly 69,000 people and devastated swathes of China's southwestern province of Sichuan.

Landslides created by the tremor have blocked the flow of rivers and led to the creation of "quake lakes" which authorities are trying to drain.

Most of the inhabitants of the park are stoic about their situation, having survived the quake with their homes intact.

Many play cards or mahjong to while away the time. One small boy sits at a makeshift table working on his grammar homework in a battered exercise book.

"We had some notice, so we prepared very well," says Chen Hui who works in building administration and has secured her family a prime spot on high, flat ground.

"In my family, there's us and also old people and children, so we arranged for the old people to come first. We bought some food and we got a good spot here," she says.

For others the discomfort is harder to bear.

"Can you imagine? I'm over 60, and having to bring all of our things up here and sleeping like this?" says a man surnamed Rao, who is with his wife and three-year-old grandson.