Since learning this week that the earthquake might have buried her mother, 24-year-old Yang Yan, left, has joined a solemn parade of those looking for the missing in Sichuan Province.

On Tuesday, she went in and out of hospitals in Pengzhou city, where she moved earlier this year to work in a teahouse. On Wednesday, she checked at a shelter for refugees that had been set up in this municipal sports center in Mianyang, north of Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu.

The sports center is housing about 10,000 of the displaced, most from hard-hit Beichuan county. Nearly all arrived with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

At the shelter, Yang Yan looked for her mother but found only neighbors from her town and many more unknown faces.

Beichuan's county seat, also called Beichuan, shown at left, was devastated by the earthquake. The government says nearly 5,000 people have been reported missing in Beichuan and surrounding areas.

At the sports-stadium-turned-refugee-center, Yang Yan was far from alone in her search. Refugees have been checking a wall with missing-person signs for details on relatives and friends.

Xiao Hong's 9-year-old son was at school when the quake hit, and she and his father were 30 kilometers away. When they finally made it home, having walked over mountain trails, they were told that the school had been destroyed and that all the survivors had already left.

"There's not much hope. But I am praying for a miracle," Ms. Xiao said.

With her father transported out of the area but still searching for her mother, Yang Yan left the sports center on Thursday, walking and hitchhiking 13 miles past blocked roads to reach her family home, one peak away from the epicenter in Wenchuan. All that lay before her was a pile of rubble, with devastation all around.

Along the way, she and the people she was traveling with saw many people who were fleeing the quake-stricken areas. The refugees carried what they could in bags and trucks.

Yang Yan and the other survivors had to wade across a river where a bridge had collapsed.

They came across many other refugees, including these camped along the roadside next to a sign pleading for help.

Along the way, Yang Yan asked other quake survivors if they'd heard any news about her village, Bashui He.

One of her friends, Liu Huan, who hadn't heard from his parents since Monday, came along on the search. He managed to find his family in a survivor camp on the mountain and stayed with them. His 3-year-old brother, it turned out, had died in the quake.

But when Yang Yan arrived at her family's property, her mother wasn't there. At left, in the distance, the gray-white area beyond the field is the rubble that's left of her home.

"I'll stay in the city and wait for news. At this point, I'm no longer hopeful that my mother is alive," she says. "I only hope that my dad can accept the truth."