Rescuers had reached all the 1,044 quake-hit villages that are under 134 townships in southwestern Sichuan Province by Tuesday evening, according to a military source.
Soldiers and armed police are still trying to rescue survivors from the debris and bring food and water to villages that have been isolated since the earthquake, the source said.
At the small village of Maliu, in Leigu township in worst-hit Beichuan county, rescuers found 80-year-old Ren Chengzhen and her polio-afflicted son, who had lost everything.
Soldiers gave them bread, instant noodles and bottled water and helped them set up a tent while sending Ren for examination.
Eighty-six residents of Maliuping village near the top of a 1,200-meter mountain had been cut off since the quake. Rescuers evacuated them on Monday afternoon after trekking through a 32-km dangerous mountain path that had about 37 landslides.
The 56-year-old Wang Chunbang was also one of the lucky survivors found by rescuers on their way to remote villages. He had been trapped for 164 hours in a damaged manganese pit in Qingchuan, northern Sichuan, until an eight-member rescue team found him on Monday morning while searching for survivors in the mountains between two townships there.
Rescuers carried him by stretcher over nearly 50 km of mountain paths and got him to a hospital 11 hours later. Wang is recovering in hospital.
At a meeting on Monday afternoon, Premier Wen Jiabao asked the armed forces to reach victims in every quake-hit village within 24 hours.
The rescuers will carry a certain amount of food and water and the army will keep air-dropping necessities to remote villages amid deep mountains, said Guo Boxiong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, who was overseeing rescue work at Yinghua township, Shifang city, Sichuan Province.
Medical workers will arrive at villages together, he said.
The armed forces will also set up mobile field kitchens at large-scale temporary shelters to provide hot meals to residents, Guo added.
(Xinhua News Agency May 20, 2008)