China's Premier, Wen Jiabao, is without a doubt the most popular figure in China's top leadership: a graying, grandfatherly standout in a crowd of wooden faces that rarely crack a smile, much less choke up on national television as Wen did after the May earthquake in Sichuan province.

The highway leading to Yingxiu, a small town near the epicenter of China's May 12 earthquake, is rent by fissures big enough to swallow a child and is choked with smashed trucks and enormous rocks. Near the town's outskirts, just past a compact car that has been crushed by a boulder, a landslide cuts off the road entirely.