By Wang Zhenghua (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-30 08:21

MIANYANG, Sichuan -- Li Yang, 16, was well-known among his peers in Beichuan Middle School as one of the best hip-hop dancers.

Now, the 10th grader is better known nationwide as the savior of one of his classmates after the May 12 quake.

A picture showing him holding an intravenous drip bottle for Liao Bo - trapped under concrete slabs of the crumbled school building - has appeared in many of the nation's newspapers.

Li Yang holds an intravenous drip bottle for Liao Bo - trapped under concrete slabs of the crumbled school building in this file photo. [Xinhua]

Li, who now lives with his schoolmates in a sports training center in Mianyang city, constantly receives calls from the media asking for personal story.

He answers each call but doesn't really think much of his fame.

In fact, he still feels a sense of guilt: "If I had arrived earlier, my cousin and many others might not have died," he told China Daily.

When the quake struck, Li was performing at the county auditorium - only of two students chosen from his school.

The auditorium collapsed but he managed to escape from the rubble unscathed.

When the dust settled and as soon as he heard that his school building also collapsed, he rushed back. He realized his classmates, including his cousin, were trapped underneath the debris

He said he could not believe his eyes: Nearly all the main buildings were in ruins. He could still hear cries for help from trapped students.

He tried to figure out where his flattened classroom, originally on the top floor of the five-story building, was located in the ruins.

"I shouted to my classmates: 'I am Li Yang. I've come to save you'.

"I lifted a heavy slab, and found three classmates badly injured. I didn't know whether they were dead or alive."

In the first hours, only the surviving teachers and students were doing rescue work with bare hands.

The next morning, a slab on Liao Bo was removed but his left leg was still trapped.

Doctors gave him an intravenous drip and asked Li to hold the bottle while waiting for rescuers.

"I kept telling him: You are all right. You can make it," Li recalled. Before the quake, Li and Liao played basketball together.

A combination of pictures shows earthquake survivor, middle school student Liao Bo under the rubble in Beichuan County, Sichuan Province, May 13, 2008, left, and in the hospital in Chongqing Municipality, on his 17th birthday, May 24, 2008, right. Liao lost his left leg in the earthquake. [Xinhua]

When he saw PLA soldiers approaching, he waved his right hand, holding the drip bottle in his left. That was the photo that moved a nation.

After holding the fluid for half an hour, Li handed it to another student and turned to care for a trapped girl, who was asking for some water.

"She was in higher spirits than Liao," Li said. "I fed her some beverage scooped in a bottle cap and kept holding her hand and comforted her."

The girl survived.

Li Yang

Li and some other survivors were relocated to an open ground in a sports center of Mianyang.

His parents, who were running a business selling poultry, survived the quake, but the family house was damaged. His sister, who works in Shanghai, returned home for a short visit.

Li said he wanted to become an entrepreneur before the quake but he is not so sure about it after the quake.

"The only thing I want to do now is to study hard."

On May 22, he went to Chongqing to see Liao, whose left leg was amputated. "I told my pal: Be optimistic. I will wait for you at school."

More than 1,100 people, most of them students, were killed or are still missing in the disaster. In Li's class of 69 students, 49 died including his cousin.

"My heart is bleeding," Li told China Daily.