'I saw the dreadful terror in the eyes of those students'

"I felt sure that my mother, brother and sister would be safe back in downtown Wenchuan."

The week seemed incredibly long, anxiety about the fate of her students and relatives meaning she got very little sleep, and she could barely eat.

"It was agonizing, and a lot of the time I found myself suddenly bursting into tears."

She eventually learned that her faith had been well placed, all of her relatives managing to survive unscathed.

Hu Zhengan, director of the Wenchuan county's education bureau, says that 374 of the county's 15,000 students and 28 of its 1,300 teachers died in the quake.

Ma says: "I realized how fragile life is and began to question the meaning of it all. I cried countless times, particularly when thinking about the quake and hearing any-thing about it."

The earthquake destroyed most of the classroom buildings in Wenchuan, leaving most students no place to study. To ensure students could safely return to lessons, most were resettled in different areas of China.

Ma's students and her husband, a schoolteacher, were resettled in Tianhui township, Chengdu.

In July 2008 she paid a visit to her husband in Chengdu. The road to it was still blocked, so Ma took a detour, which was a long and arduous journey.

After she returned home her child was stillborn.

"I bitterly rued my trip. I had wrongly thought my body could endure the long journey."

Ma has been told that she can no longer conceive children.

After the quake, psychologists throughout the country were engaged to help survivors.

Ma received long-term psychological counseling and training from organizations including the Li Ka Shing Foundation in 2009 and Beijing Normal University in 2010 and met the renowned academic and psychologist professor Lin Chongde.

"They offered us counseling to help us deal with our own painful memories and they gave us training so we could teach our students how to cope with theirs."

Ma says that the love and care her family and the public showed her have helped her immensely. In fact, for her, the earthquake, rather than being a constant reminder of pain and death, is more an affirmation of life.

Her devotion to teaching has never wavered, she says, and over the past 10 years she has shepherded 200 students toward graduation.

"Since the quake, teaching has become more than a profession through which I make a living. My students have become an extension of my own life."