Teacher Zhang Miya (left) sacrificed his life to save Zhou Yuye and another student in the Wenchuan earthquake. (Photo provided to China Daily)
She tried to buoy her spirits and those of her surviving classmates by leading a song taught to them by Zhang only a week earlier. The song may have saved them in the end — rescuers heard the children singing and after six to seven hours of hard effort they pulled three of Zhou's classmates to safety.
At the end of her peril, Zhou thought only a few hours had passed. Her first words to her mother Yu Qin were: "I want shredded pork with green peppers." It was her favorite dish. Her father had promised that he would cook it for her on the day the quake struck. Her father would not be able to keep the promise.
Coming out of the dark
Zhou Lunju, also a teacher at the Yingxiu Primary School, did not survive. His colleague and his students told how he had dashed from the computer resources room, passed two exits to reach his classroom and exhorted his pupils to run for their lives. It took three days before searchers recovered his body from the doorway of his classroom.
Zhou's mother Yu, also a teacher at the school, had joined the frantic rescue, toiling for three days, then hurrying to the hospital in Chengdu where Zhou Yuye was being treated.
The days following the disaster seemed barely real to the girl, with the loss of her father, her teacher and friends, her school and community, and the excruciating pain in her arm.
Avascular necrosis had destroyed Zhou's left forearm and it had to be amputated. At first she couldn't feel it. Then phantom limb syndrome set in along with itch and pain. "I asked my mom to scratch for me. She only cried," Zhou said.
Two months later Zhou watched from a hospital ward in Beijing where she was undergoing physical therapy as her desk mate, Lin Hao, was held aloft at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics by Chinese basketball player Yao Ming. Lin had been credited with saving two of his classmates from the devastation.
