This memorial to one ordinary girl has come to represent a huge loss of life.

On 12 May last year, a powerful earthquake struck the province of Sichuan in central China. Measuring 8 on the Richter scale, it killed nearly 70,000 people and left 375,000 injured. Around 15 million people lived in or around the earthquake zone and five million were made homeless. Tremors were felt as far away as Beijing, Hong Kong and Bangkok.

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The quake hit Wenchaun district, an area largely untouched by China's newfound economic prosperity. Ageing and badly constructed buildings--dubbed 'tofu dregs' by the locals--offered little or no seismic resistance and were quick to collapse, exacerbating the death toll. Horrifyingly, thousands of children died when inadequately engineered school buildings simply caved in on them. Official figures released this year record 5,335 student deaths and another 546 children disabled in some way.

Thousands of distraught parents accused local builders and officials of cutting corners in school construction. Their impassioned protests cast a long shadow over China's Olympic annus mirabilis, showing the nation's much-vaunted progress to be a hollow illusion for those living outside the big cities. But over a year later, despite the promise of official investigations by the authorities, the issue appears to have been firmly swept under the carpet.

Juyuan Middle School in the town of Dujianyan was one of the worst single incidents: 600 pupils were killed when the school collapsed, among them 15-year-old Hu Huishan, who loved literature and dreamed of becoming a writer. She was the only child of Hu Ming and Liu Li, an ordinary couple who both used to work in a local paper mill. The quake struck just 11 days after her parents' wedding anniversary.

Amid such carnage, the idea of commemorating a single life seems somehow futile--a mere drop in an ocean of human grief. But Hu Huishan has become the focus of an extraordinarily poignant memorial by architect Liu Jiakun. At 19[m.sup.2], it's probably the smallest memorial hall in the world and the most pink (pink was Hu's favourite colour). Within a simple brick structure shaped like a hut or disaster relief tent, is a single, luscious, sugar-pink room adorned with pictures of Hu and some of her cherished belongings. Her presence fills the space through the colourful flotsam of a typical dreamy, sporty teenage girl--badminton racquets, her taekwondo suit, a Hello Kitty music box, favourite books, a strawberry patterned scarf. It sounds mawkish, but is actually rather tender and moving. 'I didn't want to create a mournful atmosphere,' says Liu Jiakun. 'I just wanted to turn an ordinary girl's room into a tranquil corner.'

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Liu first encountered Hu Huishan's parents three days after the earthquake. He had come to Dujianyan from the provincial capital Chengdu to volunteer his services in the rescue effort and help investigate the cause of the school's collapse. Surrounded by grieving parents, Liu felt stricken and powerless in the face of such an appalling loss of life. 'I am the father of an eight-year-old son,' says Liu. 'I can hardly imagine what it would be like to see my son under that rubble. 1 really wanted to do something for the family'.

Initially, Liu hesitated to propose the idea of an individual memorial. 'No one has ever done something for such an ordinary person,' he says, but a month after the disaster, Hu's parents consented and offered to provide some of her belongings for display. The Hu Huishan memorial sits on a peaceful wooded site near the much larger and more official Wenchuan Earthquake Memorial Museum. A cobbled path winds through the landscape and a cinnamon tree stands in a red brick patio marking the entrance. The exterior is utterly plain and sober, belying the soft, feminine realm within. And though small, it speaks for the whole of humanity, much more eloquently and movingly than the official earthquake museum, with its macabre tableaux of bloodstained clothes and clinical photographs. 'The goal was to achieve a sense of simplicity, austerity and universality,' says Liu. 'Though small, it is enough to remind people of the collective memory of the earthquake. Though small, it is the most meaningful work I have ever done.'