The story appears on

Page A3

April 19, 2013

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

HomeWorld

University students honor life of 'bubbly chatterbox' Lu

LESS than 24 hours before she died, Lu Lingzi sent an exuberant email to a professor after learning she had passed part of a major final exam.

"I am so happy to get this result!" she wrote. "Thank you very much."

Lu was killed on Monday in the Boston Marathon explosions. She was 23.

She was a Boston University graduate student studying mathematics and statistics and scheduled to receive her graduate degree in 2015.

Lu was at the finish line of the race with two friends from BU. One, Danling Zhou, had surgeries on Monday and Tuesday and is in stable condition at Boston Medical Center, a university statement said. The other was unharmed.

Chinese students gathered in front of the campus chapel on Wednesday evening with posters and photographs of Lu to honor her life. As they rolled out a long sheet of white paper on a table, students wandered over off the sidewalk and began writing messages of condolence in both Chinese and English. Another memorial gathering was planned for yesterday evening at a campus arena.

Lili Gu, 22, who is from Shanghai, said a group of about a dozen students went from hospital to hospital, searching for Lu, until they were informed that she had died.

"I was shocked last night as I heard the update," Gu said. "I mean, we were all searching. And we all had our hope on."

On Monday morning, Lu had put the finishing touches on a group research project she was planning to present at a statistics conference. She also posted a photo of the breakfast - bread chunks and fruit - she ate the morning she died. "My wonderful breakfast," she wrote.

Lu was a vivacious chatterbox who had lots of friends on campus, said Tasso Kaper, chair of the mathematics and statistics department, whose face lit up talking about his former student. "The word bubbly - that's kind of a corny word - but that describes her very well," Kaper said.

Lu loved the springtime and kept asking when the trees would bloom in Boston.

"She was very interested in the flowers," he said. "Spring is a very important time of year for her."

Lu Yijiang, a 21-year-old student from Shanghai, said the Chinese student community was banding together to support Lu's friends and family.

"We all are far away from home. We are international students, we are Chinese," she said. "Here we are the family. We have to do something for the girl."

She graduated last year from the Beijing Institute of Technology, where she once got a perfect score on a differential equations exam. Her LinkedIn profile said she was awarded "excellent student" at the school and that she held jobs or internships at the Beijing offices of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu consultancy and at Dongxing Securities Co during her undergraduate years.

Lu grew up in an intellectual family in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, and graduated from a highly competitive high school that routinely sends students abroad.



 

Copyright 漏 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

娌叕缃戝畨澶 31010602000204鍙

Email this to your friend