【正文】 e the city of Tangshan even when no planes were in the sky. In the city, who thought little of these events, were asleep as usual that night. At 3:42 am everything began to shake. It seemed as if the world was at an end! Eleven kilometers directly below the city the greatest earthquake of the 20th century had begun. It was felt in Beijing, which is more than two hundred kilometers away. Onethird of the nation felt it. A huge crack that was eight kilometers long and thirty 4 meters wide cut across houses, roads and canals. Steam burst from holes in the ground. Hard hills of rock became rivers of dirt. In fifteen terrible seconds a large city lay in ruins. The suffering of the people was extreme. Twothird of them died or were injured during the earthquake. Thousands of families were killed and many children were left without parents. The number of people who were killed or injured reached more than . But how could the survivors believe it was natural? Everywhere they looked nearly everything was destroyed. All of the city’s hospitals, 75%of its factories and buildings and 90%of its homes were gone. Bricks covered the ground like red autumn leaves. No wind, however, could blow them away. Two dams fell and most of the bridges also fell or were not safe for travelling. The railway tracks were now useless pieces o f steel. Tens of thousands of cows would never give milk again. Half a million pigs and millions of chickens were dead. Sand now filled the wells instead of water. People were shocked. Then, later that afternoon, another big quake which was almost as strong as the first one shook Tangshan. Some of the rescue workers and doctors were trapped under the ruins. More buildings fell down. Water, food, and electricity were hard to get. People began to wonder how long the disaster would last. All hope was not lost. Soon after the quakes, the army sent 150,000 soldiers to Tangshan to help the rescue workers. Hundreds of thousands of people were helped. The army anized teams to dig out those who were trapped and to bury the dead. To the north of the city, most of the 10,000 miners were rescued from the coal mines there. Workers built shelters for survivors whose homes had been destroyed. Fresh water was taken to the city by train, truck and plane. Slowly, the city began to breathe again. Unit 5 Elias’ story My name is Elias. I am a poor black worker in South Africa. The time when I first met Nelson Mandela was a very difficult period of my life. I was twelve years old. It was in 1952 and Mandela was the black lawyer to whom I went to for advice. He offered guidance to poor black people on their legal problems. He was generous with his time, for which I was grateful. I needed his help because I had very little education. I began school at six. The school where I studied for only two years was three kilometers away. I had to leave because my family could not continue to pay the school fees and the bus fare. I could not read or write well. After trying hard, I got a job in a gold mine. However, this was a time when one had got to have a passbook to live in Jo