Away from the noise and pollution of China’s larger cities, the ghost town of Old Beichuan is surrounded by green forest-covered hills. Tucked below in the valley, tilted buildings and piles of crumbled brick covered by weeds and vine sit just as they had once fallen.

This place, though in ruins, is not ancient—it is a modern-day rural town devasted in an earthquake in China’s Sichuan province.

The rain fell, it seemed, nonstop for a month. Streets flooded, water rushed under bridges, and still the rain fell. One wet morning in July, coffee in hand and mixed emotions brewing, I looked out the window of my apartment. Raindrops beat against the glass blurring the cityscape below. I sighed. Soon I would leave this place. It all seemed unreal—the rain, the past two years, and what might come next.