He suffered head injuries and was sent to Huaxi Hospital affiliated to Sichuan University in Chengdu. Doctors said he had a "very good chance" of recovery.

Shen was conscious and clutched the hand of a People's Liberation Army doctor throughout his 30-minute trip by helicopter to the provincial capital Chengdu, the China Central Television reported.

Sunday also witnessed another tale of survival in which a slightly bruised man Tang Xiong was pulled from a collapsed hospital of Beichuan County at 9:15 a.m., 139 hours after the quake.

Tang was still conscious when he was pulled out, said rescuers. His wife was rescued on Thursday.

The survival tales followed from Saturday which saw more than 60 people saved from the earthquake wreckage.

Also in Beichuan, one of the worst-hit counties in the 8.0-magnitude quake, a man Wu Jianping was rescued at 9:55 p.m. Saturday from a collapsed building, 127 hours after the tremor.

Monday's quake, the strongest to hit New China, had killed 32,476 people as of 2 p.m. Sunday, including 31,978 in Sichuan. An additional 220,109 people were injured nationwide, according to the emergency response office of the State Council.

A 61-year-old woman, who had been buried for 127 hours, was saved from a ruined dormitory building in Dujiangyan by Russian rescuers late Saturday night. She was the first survivor found by a foreign rescue team.

Although the time for the best chance of rescue, the first 72 hours after an earthquake, had passed, "saving people's lives is still the top priority of the relief work", President Hu Jintao said Saturday night.

Hu flew to Sichuan on Friday from Beijing to oversee relief work in the worst-hit areas. The government has mobilized rescue staff to conduct thorough searches in quake-ravaged villages for possible survivors and to never give up.