A 46-year-old man who was rescued almost 100 hours after the devastating earthquake hit China, said he lived on cigarettes and paper napkins and drank his urine to survive those critical moments, state media reported.

"I searched my pockets and found half a pack of cigarettes and a few sheets of paper napkins. I broke the cigarettes into pieces and ate them. After the cigarettes, I turned to the paper napkins," Peng Zhijun was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

He was dug out from the rubble of a collapsed building near a pharmaceutical company in Beichuan county, one of the worst-hit by the 7.8 magnitude temblor, the deadliest in the last three decades that, according to official figures, has killed over 22,000.

"I had to drink my urine. I managed to take off one of my shoes and used it to collect my urine," Peng, who fractured his left arm and suffered slight injuries in legs said, adding, "I had to save myself".

"I encouraged more than 10 others to drink urine. But they did not listen to me. Unfortunately, they died one after the other," Peng lamented.

"So long as you persist with your belief, you can have one more minute for survival and one more chance of being rescued", Peng, who cried loudly after seeing rescuers, said, striking a philosophic note to his miraculous survival.