The crumpled ruins of Beichuan, the most seriously damaged major town in the Sichuan earthquake zone, are to be preserved and turned into a museum and memorial.

The local government wants it to become not just a place to remember the 8,600 dead of the town, almost half its population, but somewhere the Chinese people can learn to prevent similar disasters.

After securing the town's collapsed and leaning homes, schools and office blocks, it wants to leave them as they are rather than demolishing them.