An earthquake hero goes to university

The Beijing News
August 28, 2008

A new school year starts this month, and millions of new freshmen are going off to college . Two major Beijing newspapers, The Beijing News and Beijing Times, printed a photo of incoming freshman Wang Jiaming on the front page.

Unlike most other students, Wang didn’t take the National College Entrance Examination (aka gaokao); he was admitted to Tsinghua University, China’s most elite institution, because of his status as an “earthquake hero.”

Among hundreds of candidates, Wang and 49 other students were elected and given the title of “young earthquake heroes.” The election, which was co-sponsored by the Youth League Central Committee, Ministry of Education, Central Civilization Office, and China Women Federation, was held in June and the votes were cast via the Internet and SMS. Wang and another three students who were set to graduate high school this year were awarded a spot at the university of their choice, all without having to take the gaokao.

Talking about his feelings of the award, Shen Long, another “young earthquake hero” said, “It’s better than winning a 5-million-yuan lottery.”

Beijing Times
August 28, 2008

Although it is widely accepted that these students deserve praise for their altruistic decision to save lives, when compared to the vast majority of earthquake survivors, whose chances of going to university were dimmed by the disruption of the disaster, a sense of unfairness seems inevitable. In question are not only the student “heroes”: a woman police officer who was promoted because of breastfeeding babies caught in the earthquake was also the focus of controversy.

Earlier this year, another student named Li Zeyang was evaluated as a “excellent earthquake student” which entitled him to choose any university except Tsinghua and PKU. Students at his school later reported that he obtained the title using the influence of his father, a local school principal. As a result, an investigation was launched. Although the alleged fraud was eventually disproven, the admission letter from the university he applied to failed to come.