At 2:09 a.m. on January 23, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake woke a large number of people in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region from their sleep. Amanguli Tuohuti was one of them. She took her children and quickly left her house in a remote village in Wushi, a county where the epicenter was located.
After sending her children to safety at her parents’ house, Tuohuti, a doctor, joined other volunteers to help the approximately 100 fellow villagers who were relocated to a temporary shelter. In less than a day, a meeting room of the village’s community center was transformed into
