When Lu Xun, the doyen of modern Chinese literature, was a medical student in 1906, he saw a lantern slide of a group of Japanese soldiers decapitating a Chinese man. What dismayed him was the indifference of the Chinese spectators at the scene.

Lu wrote, "the people of a weak, laggard country, even though they may enjoy health, can only serve as the senseless subjects of, and audience for, public executions."

A century later, the Chinese people are no longer indifferent to the sufferings of their compatriots. After the devastating May 12 earthquake the whole country seemed to mobilize for relief work, showing the generosity and sense of duty expected in a civil society in a calamity of that magnitude.

The public, officials and soldiers worked together. Thousands of volunteers went to the quake zone to help and tens of billions in cash has poured into Sichuan province.

People queued up at blood donation vehicles, and many are seeking to adopt quake orphans.

A month after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake, the official death roll is almost 70,000, with more than 17,000 missing. More than 14 million survivors have to rebuild their homes.

Qiu Hua stares into the distance from the stairs of the Jiuzhou Stadium in Sichuan’s Mianyang City.

"I have nothing now," says Qiu, 40. "My house in Beichuan collapsed, my crop is ruined. The plant where I worked has stopped production. I don’t know what the future holds."

He now lives in a tent in the stadium, which shelters almost 10,000 other people who have lost their homes.

"I’ve got one thing", says Qiu. "I have the affection and care of other people in other areas. If they didn’t care, more people would be dead."