Beichuan is a county in east Sichuan that exists now principally as a memorial to the magnitude of what happened on 12 May 2008. The earthquake that struck that morning — measuring 7.9, with its epicentre at Wenchuan to the south — killed nearly 70,000 people across Sichuan, and Beichuan's county seat at Qushan Town suffered some of the most catastrophic destruction. Rather than rebuild over the ruins, the government sealed Qushan Town and built a new county seat at Yongchang, leaving the old town to stand as a monument.
The old county seat at Qushan Town is viewable from a designated observation point along its perimeter. The collapsed buildings, buried streets, and the ruins of Beichuan Middle School — where hundreds of students died when their classroom blocks pancaked — remain exactly as they were on the day of the earthquake, preserved by a combination of government decision and the logistical difficulty of clearing a mountainous debris field of that scale. The effect is genuinely affecting in a way that photographs cannot fully convey, and the scale of what you are looking at only becomes apparent gradually.
The 5/12 Wenchuan Earthquake Memorial Museum, opened in 2011 and located in the former Beichuan High School building nearby, documents the disaster through photographs, personal effects, and testimony. The museum is free to enter and well-organised. It does not shy away from the failures of building construction — the gap between official and unofficial death tolls was partly a political controversy about school construction quality — though it also records the rescue operations and reconstruction with considerable detail. The Tangjiashan barrier lake, created by earthquake landslides blocking the Jianjiang River, is visible from the high ground above the ruins.
Getting to Beichuan requires a bus from Mianyang, itself a 90-minute train ride from Chengdu. The new county seat has accommodation for those who want more than a day visit. Beichuan is not a destination in the conventional travel guide sense, but for anyone with an interest in how China has dealt — and is still dealing — with the physical and psychological aftermath of the earthquake, it is one of the most significant places in the province.