"It was a nightmare," she said in an interview with Xinhua. "My whole family was buried when the roof collapsed. My husband and our 14-year-old daughter were killed."

    Gao was dug out by her neighbors, but her spinal column was broken and Gao has spent the years since she was confined to a wheelchair.

    She was one of the 164,000 people injured in one of the deadliest earthquakes of the 20th Century. The quake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, killed 242,000 people in this industrial city 200 kilometers east of Beijing.

    In the wake of the disaster, experts from the World Health Organization predicted the 3,817 quake paraplegics like Gao would survive for no more than 15 years. But at least 1,600 are still living with the trauma.

    Since 1979, the government has built 18 nursing homes in Tangshan to provide treatment and counseling for paralyzed survivors.

    Gao is the oldest of 65 survivors at one of the largest nursing homes in the southern suburbs of Tangshan, where they have spent 25 years.

    The home rarely lacks visitors, and an influx of reporters, officials and volunteers has crowded in to mark the quake anniversary on Friday.

    But life goes on as usual, with the elderly chatting together and the younger ones playing basketball and ping pong in their wheelchairs.

    "Five of them are seed players at the Hebei provincial basketball association for the handicapped," said Zhang Hong, vice president of the home. "They're preparing for next year's national handicapped games."

    Zhang and his colleagues have worked hard to help the survivors shake off the past.

    "The psychological trauma was more detrimental than their physical wounds," he said. "Nearly everyone was depressed in the first years. Some even attempted suicide."

    When Gao was told she would never walk again, she initially regretted calling for help in the ruins. "If I hadn't, I'd have died with my husband and daughter and wouldn't have suffered any further."

    She felt miserable for several years, until she got "used" to moving about on wheelchair, she said. "On the day I turned 70, I suddenly felt it was good to be alive after all."

    That day, Gao suddenly became aware of the care and affection of the people around her: doctors and nurses who visited her many times a day to make sure she was doing fine, cooks who tried to draw her out about her favorite food, volunteers -- mostly children -- who sat at her side, sang and told stories to make her happy.

    "The Chinese believe a narrow escape often forebodes good luck," she said. "It's true in my case."

    The patients are encouraged to sing, play chess, read and write stories or tailor clothes to make life more enjoyable.

    Wang Baozhan, 47, has won 32 gold medals in international marathons and basketball games and is known as "champion on the wheelchair".

    Yao Cuiqin, a former dancer who was paralyzed in the quake at 23, has won first prize in a national singing contest and published three memoirs.

    "I'm writing a fourth to recollect the earthquake, relief efforts and the tenacity of the rescuers, victims and their families," she said.

    In 1991, the city government raised more than 1 million yuan (125,000 U.S. dollars) to build a rehabilitation community for paraplegics who had survived the quake and set up families of their own.

    The community is now home to 46 paraplegics in 25 families, some of whom have children, said Yang Changlu, head of the community and a quake survivor himself. Enditem