Until a few days ago, most stories about schools in areas struck by the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan featured flattened buildings or teachers who risked or even sacrificed their lives to save children.
A heated debate is also going on over Fan Meizhong, a teacher who ran out of the building when the tremor shook and left his students behind. Many netizens and even a popular TV channel get hooked on this teacher, even though Fan committed the sin of dereliction of his duty.
One netizen pointed out Fan is winning a publicity game. As an old Chinese saying goes, there would always be some people who would seek even notoriety after failing to gain fame.
It is time to shift the limelight away from Fan and focus it on some 50 courageous girls and boys from Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi and Chongqing.
Although their black/white mug shots printed in leading national newspapers and displayed on the national media websites are plain, their stories along with their simple quotes should move us, as they are a testimony to a promising new generation.
We adults sometimes like to label today's girls and boys as self-centered, but they are not. Going through their stories, we read how one boy or girl after another returned to the collapsed or shaky buildings to help their schoolmates out of danger.
Even while precariously clinging to life, they still had thoughts for other people.
"Please clear out quickly, it is too dangerous here", Qin Jingwen, 17 and a 10th-grader of the Dongqi Middle School in Mianzhu, told a rescuer, who braced into a small opening of the collapsed building to give Qin a pain-killing shot.
"Please get her out first", Xue Xiao, the 18-year-old who has become known as the Cola Boy, told rescuers, who found both Xue and a girl schoolmate in an opening under slabs of concretes. "Get him out first, because he is more seriously hurt", the girl followed.
We often have the worry that children nowadays are too spoiled and dependent, but these children, with their own actions, show us they have the courage to shoulder their responsibilities. Many of them became natural leaders overnight, and a few even sacrificed their young lives.
Song Xue, 12 and a 6th-grader, was a student leader on duty when the tremor started. She called out to her classmates to run out. Already out of the one-story building, she rushed back to the classroom when she saw two students still asleep. She shook them awake. The two classmates survived, but Song didn't make it.
At a time when many of us adults display cowardice, it is only natural that children develop fears as well.
But these children know - or knew - how to overcome difficulties, with wisdom and calmness.
Deng Qingqing, 14 and a 9th-grader from Yinghua Township Middle School in Shifang, was still reading a book using a flashlight. "It was dark down there and I was really afraid", she told paramilitary soldiers who pulled her out of the rubble. "I read to relieve myself of the fear".
In seconds after the earth shook, Kang Jie, 11 and a 6th-grader of Yingxiu Primary School near the epicenter, had the time to select the vegetable field to jump into and make sure she landed on her buttocks, right before the building crashed down.
She didn't run away, but rushed back to the collapsed building to help some teachers and students out of the rubble.
The media have their right to put the spotlight on controversies, but they also have the duty to share the stories of the heroes and heroines, including those of such children. It is these people who hold out promises for an even brighter future of our society.
E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 06/19/2008 page8)
