"The food and water supplies are okay, and I'm really impressed with the volunteers' work," he said.

"The government has also helped a great deal."

Apart from government-provided lunch boxes, many Mianyang residents have been sending homemade porridge, vegetables, meat and steamed buns to the survivors.

"The only thing is that I can't sleep. With so many people around, the air and temperature here are an issue. It feels much better under the trees," Wang said.

Ma Peisong, deputy director-general of the stadium's rescue office, said Nanhe hosts more than 8,000 survivors, many of them from Beichuan.

"A community has been formed, although more tents are needed," he said.

That community comprises survivors, volunteers and medical personnel. Survivors can also make free phone calls to friends and family in two temporary phone booths.

"We are trying to offer food, water and basic sanitation for all," Ma said.

"And we're working on medicine to treat infections."

People like Zhang Lili, 19, one of the 2,000 local volunteers in and around Nanhe, are trying to accomplish those goals.

"We just want to make the survivors' life easier," he said.

Support workers have also poured into the stadium from outside the city and province.

On Friday morning, 87 people from Tangshan, Hebei province, the site of China's worst earthquake to date, rushed to Nanhe after a day and night on the road.

"We feel the pain of the quake victims here," one of the team's drivers, who lost his father in the 1976 quake, said.

(China Daily May 17, 2008)