BEICHUAN, China – It looked like a Sunday midday stroll.

Families, couples, and clusters of young students carrying large bouquets and plastic bags containing incense and paper walked under a hazy sun toward a town set in a picturesque river valley.

But this was no weekend country ramble, and the town of Beichuan was no longer really a town.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Visitors to Beichuan pay their respects to the dead.

A ghostly presence now, Beichuan was leveled on May 12 last year, when a deadly earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale struck western China.

So many buildings in this town collapsed, and landslides shed boulders the size of houses onto the main road, sealing off the town, that that it took rescuers days before they could assess the actual scope of the damage.

When they did, it was discovered that half of Beichuan's population of 30,000 was killed or missing.

"Our friend's parents died there," said Wu Qian, a young woman who, like her three friends, carried a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums.  "They're still buried in there. We came to bring flowers."