Mum's ballet promise kept little Li Yue alive through quake agony

A mother's promise kept 12-year-old Li Yue going through the darkest 70 hours of the Sichuan girl's life, as she lay buried in the cruel debris of last year's magnitude 8 earthquake.

Now the strong will of her mother, Li Jiaxiu , sustains the girl's pursuit of her dream to dance - although she lost her left leg in the quake. Just before the killer quake, Ms Li had promised to send Li Yue to ballet class when she reached Primary Five this year.

That promise became Li Yue's mantra as she lay trapped under the debris of Beichuan primary school with six classmates crushed below her. 'I told myself as long as I survive, I can dance,' she said.

But when the rescue team found her, they had no choice but to remove her left leg below the knee at the scene - with just two shots of painkiller. Two further amputations removed her entire left leg.

'I have so many regrets about my little girl because I cannot keep my promise to send her to ballet class,' said her mother, 45, while watching her dancing wheelchair ballet on the stage with other dancers in Hong Kong yesterday, at Kwun Tong's APM shopping mall. The two were among four pairs of mothers and children invited to Hong Kong as part of a campaign to raise funds to provide artificial limbs for quake victims.

Ms Li said she was keen to 'make it up to her daughter' by supporting her dancing dream because she had not been at her daughter's side during the quake or the first two amputations. 'I was running a Sichuan restaurant in Xinjiang and was unable to return immediately,' she said.

A single mother, Ms Li only managed to get back to Sichuan four days after the quake.