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 Despite an official promise of unfettered media coverage, police barred entry to at least two towns where schools collapsed in the May 12 quake. In the town of Juyuan, a reporter from Singapore's Straits Times newspaper was detained by police and forced to return to the provincial capital of Chengdu, about an hour away.
About a dozen police and paramilitary troops guarded the gate of Juyuan's destroyed middle school, where 50 people gathered.
Outside the quake-flattened town of Beichuan, more than 200 parents blocked the valley's sole road, angry that a memorial plaque to dead students had been smashed overnight.
"We're dispirited. Our children have been dead for a month. The memorial plaque is broken and reporters have been chased away," said Wang Ping, whose 16-year-old daughter died when Beichuan Middle School collapsed. "I'm 40. All our hopes were in our children. Now they're dead. Our future is dead, too."
The plaque, a shiny polished black stone with gold letters that read "Beichuan May 12 Memorial to Middle School Teachers and Students" was erected on a hillside near the school in a small ceremony on Monday. On Thursday it lay in pieces, and parents were upset that local officials did not seem to care.
In Dujiangyan, across the quake zone, police and troops barred even parents from entering the ruined Xinjian elementary school.
Jing Linzhong, whose son died in the quake, said he arrived early in the morning, before security forces sealed off the area, to join other parents in a vigil on the school's playground. Jing said blocking parents from visiting the site could impede the healing process.
"It's unfair," said Jing as he sat with three other parents on the playground, surrounded by debris adorned with white funeral wreaths. "Some people are getting psychological counseling, but for us, we find it therapeutic simply to gather at the school and meet with each other. We have a lot in common."
Another family knelt on the sidewalk in front, burning incense and pouring soda into cups as an offering to the dead.
About 7,000 classrooms collapsed in the magnitude 7.9 quake, often in areas where no other buildings were badly affected. Parents and some engineers tasked with surveying the wreckage say the collapses appear to point to poor design, a lack of steel reinforcement bars in the concrete and the use of other substandard building materials.
Security forces began clamping down after an initial openness to reporting on the quake and a mild approach to protests.
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 Parents reached by phone in the village of Wufu, where 270 children died in a collapsed primary school, said they were holding off on any commemorations or protests until the release of investigation results promised on or around June 20. The results may pave the way for lawsuits or trials against officials and private contractors involved.
Wufu parents Li Caojun and Ye Yaolin said they hadn't been threatened or intimidated, although the school site had been closed off by police. Other parents said they had been visited by police and believed their phones were being tapped.
No formal commemorations of the one month mark were being held in Beijing, although state television broadcast a gathering on Wednesday meant to showcase the massive aid effort by focusing on the efforts of aid works.
In the traditional Chinese mourning cycle, one month is less important than the fifth week after a death, and some parents said they were considering holding ceremonies on June 15
-- the 35th day after the quake.
State broadcaster CCTV showed workers wearing white anti-chemical suits and face masks spraying disinfectant into rubble in Beichuan, where hundreds of bodies remain buried under collapsed buildings.
China has ordered government departments to cut spending to free up reconstruction funds for the estimated 5 million people made homeless, few of whom had insurance.
Planning experts have recommended that more than 30 towns in the quake-hit areas, including Beichuan, be rebuilt elsewhere, according to Caijing, a leading Chinese business magazine.
Seeking to aid the recovery effort, a Japanese research body presented materials documenting reconstruction work performed after the 1995 Kobe earthquake to Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai, China's official Xinhua News Agency said.
The report quoted Cui as saying the presentation came "at an opportune moment when China has shifted its focus from rescue and relief operations to reconstruction and recovery efforts."
[Associated
Press; By AUDRA ANG]
Associated Press writer Cara Anna in Dujiangyan contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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