Upright and united stood the country_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Upright and united stood the country

The second day after the quake, I read the story of Qu Wanrong, a kindergarten teacher, who shielded a child with her back against a falling slab from the collapsed roof. She died but the child was saved. I was deeply moved and told the story to a foreign colleague of mine, who wrote a column mentioning the heroic teacher. In the following days, I read too many of such stories. In many cases, both the teachers and the shielded students died. But the teachers still merit our respect, for they flung themselves between danger and their students reacting to their instinct as a teacher.

There are also other examples of people choosing to honor their professional duties rather than taking care of their own loved ones. Yuan Shicong, an official of the Qingchuan county government, passed the debris of his home three times on his way to rescue residents in collapsed houses but did not stop to save his mother and niece who he knew were trapped under the rubble. Later the women died.

An unknown doctor and a nurse I saw in a TV footage were as idealistic as Yuan. They busied themselves attending wounded people saved from the ruins but did not make any attempt to save their own children who were trapped in the rubble a few meters away. When asked by a reporter, they said it was useless for them to watch the rescuers working on the debris. "Our post is here," they said, tears running down their cheeks.

Children were as brave as the adults. Ma Jian, a student of the Beichuan middle school, dug the debris for four hours with bare hands to save a classmate. Yin Quankui and Zhu Hualin, students of another middle school, were escaping from their collapsed school when they heard the cry of a little girl. A grandpa tossed the child about three years old onto the street before the falling walls buried him. The two students stopped to pick up the child despite the danger and brought her to safety. In the rescuing camp, they took care of the orphan like "parents" though they were children themselves.