Search for hero who saved boy from quake
Print Edition
The video of a quake survivor searching for the army officer who saved his life 10 years ago has attracted much attention on China’s social media.
“Ten years have passed. I have become a soldier like you. Can you see me? I’ve been looking for you all these years. Where are you?” the survivor, Qiang Tianlin, says in the video.
Since the video went online a week ago, it has been viewed more than 12 million times and forwarded over 30,000 times on Sina Weibo.
Qiang was 14 and attending Guanzhuang Middle School when the 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan’s Wenchuan County on May 12, 2008.
The quake claimed more than 80,000 lives, and around 130,000 military personnel took part in the search and rescue work.
Worried about his family, Qiang left his school and headed home alone. Walking on a mountain track, aftershocks suddenly caused a landslide.
A passing soldier grabbed Qiang and used his own body to shield the teenager from the falling rocks.
“Were it not that soldier, I might have died. I saw falling rocks hitting his back and his hands were bleeding,” Qiang recalled. The soldier took him to a temporary shelter nearby and fetched Qiang’s family the next day. In the following months, he came to the shelter several times, setting up tents and delivering supplies to people.
“I regret that I didn’t ask for his name. All I know is that he was 1.7 meters tall and others called him Battalion Commander,” Qiang said.
The events of May 12 totally changed Qiang’s life. Previously, his academic performance was poor, but the officer gave him numerous notebooks as gifts before he disappeared. “He told me to study hard and walk out of the mountains to see the outside world.”
Qiang kept his hero’s words in mind. He enrolled at National University of Defense Technology in 2012, joined the army and is now a member of the Chinese International Search and Rescue Team.
Although Qiang is yet to take on a rescue mission, he believes that he, like the soldier who saved his life, will “bring hope to people in need.”
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