After the quake, she searched every hospital in Mianyang, but found none of her relatives.

“I saw bodies all the way here, ” said Li Yalan, a 24-year-old computer specialist now sleeping on blankets with her family in a stadium in Mianyang.

Chengdu focuses on electronic information and biomedicine, Mianyang on electronic products and Deyang on advanced manufacturing.

Dozens of similar pleas are posted at the sports arena in the city of Mianyang, now a relief camp for thousands of survivors.

"Getting to those places is harder than climbing to the sky, " says Liu Leiming, a spokesman for the local government in Mianyang, the nearest city.