The first thing that entered Chen Mei's mind when she heard about the Sichuan quake on May 12 was how she could help.

"I hoped to be a volunteer in the disaster-affected areas at that time, so I tried my best to get information on how to go about it," said Chen, 37, who works at a Beijing-based website.

She went online and found the most effective way to get information was to read the blogs of other volunteers who already arrived in the quake-hit areas. "They would write about traffic hold-ups, and since government-organized rescue works were not available, volunteers were most needed. What volunteers should do for themselves before leaving are both material and psychological preparation," Chen said.

Although she eventually didn't make it as a volunteer because of work commitments in Beijing, she did manage to post some useful information on her own blog about volunteering, hoping it would help others.

Online lifeline

Like Chen, hundreds of millions of Chinese netizens glean and provide information about the earthquake through blogs. On the Internet, information about the disaster was disseminated in double quick time. Many survivors posted the pictures that they took during the quake in their blogs that show the pain of the suffering people, cracks in the earth, collapsed buildings and blocked roads.

A blogger in South China's Yunnan Province with Shuo Lai Hua Chang as Web name at sina.com, one of the leading portals and major blogging service providers in China, posted a blog about the quake only four minutes after the first tremor, which is said the first blog on the event.

The variety of blog entries were most imaginative. Some bloggers updated the casualty list, some initiated online mourning for the dead, while others gave information about what to do in the event of aftershocks. Also found were the concerns about the fate of the pandas, pictures of Wenchuan County, the epicenter, before the quake, and contents about the brave folk who moved the nation by their heroics.

Chinese netizens also launched a campaign to seek surviving fellow bloggers online. On May 25, a blog post at sina.com by Yang Di in Wenchuan County touched the hearts of many. "Thanks to everyone for the concern about me and I am alive," he wrote. The simple message received more than 13,000 replies from people sending Yang their blessings.

Because of the high view rate, the blog space of popular bloggers became information stations. In the blog space of a well- known blogger named Xiao Jing Zi at sina.com, a message from the quake-hit area caught the attention of mainstream media. It said that a neighborhood in Dujiangyan City, one of the worst-hit areas, had been missed by governmental or social assistance because of its remoteness. Thanks to this note, water, food and other disaster-relief aid finally arrived at the area.

Blogs have also been a channel for people to reflect various problems in the quake's aftermath. A blogger, with Wu Meng Liu Lang Zhe as his blog name at sina.com, suggested that the government needed to organize the psychological medical teams more effectively in terms of communication and coordination.

The blogger said in one of his blogs that he is a teacher in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and went to Mianyang, another city that was badly affected by the quake, to be a volunteer. He worked as a teacher in a tent school there. He mentioned a case of a girl in his tent school who once received three psychological sessions in half a day, which the girl's mother said had made her more tired and distraught.

An important media supplement

According to sina.com, up to May 17 blogs dealing with the quake uploaded to the website totaled 2 million, and the page view of these blogs on the website increased by 20 percent.