Small body, big heart
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"Lend your hand to others and get the pleasure yourself."
These are the words of Tsering Lodin, a 10-year-old Tibetan boy who single-handedly helped three classmates escape from the April 14 earthquake in Yushu.
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Tsering Lodin (right), a 10-year-old Tibetan boy who helped three classmates escape from the Yushu earthquake, stands with his sisters in a quake tent area in Yushu. |
Standing only 130 cm tall, the thinly-built Tsering Lodin is not the sort of boy one would immediate associate with saving someone's life, let alone three.
"It's really not worth talking about," he says, a little shy at first about describing his heroic actions.
As class monitor, the second-grader keeps the classroom key. He has to get up at 6 am and rides more than half an hour to school.
"I was about to open the door of my classroom, which is on the first floor, when the building started jolting and flakes of cement began falling from the corridor of the second floor," he says.
All the students began rushing towards the main door of the school building. "Then I heard shouts of 'help', 'help' as I was about to run out of the door," he continues.
Three other students were still running along the corridor as the main door was being squeezed shut by the strong quake, and they seemed destined to be buried alive.
Tsering Lodin turned back and used as much strength as he could muster, allowing two of the three to slip through before the heavy door finally got the better of his little body.
"I had to lead another student to the only corridor window that was still open," Tsering Lodin said. After lifting the student up to the window, his escape from the first floor was completely shut off.
He then rushed to the second floor and jumped out a window. Miraculously, he landed on a patch of dirt, suffering only a bruised knee and sprained ankle.
"I didn't even get a fracture," he said, showing bruises on his right knee, which is still purple.
In fact, he didn't know the other three students and wasn't even sure whether they were boys or girls. "It all happened so quickly," he explained.
"I saw him jump out of a window on the second floor," said Shekar Tsedrup, his 14-year-old sister who goes to the same school.
Her classroom was in another building and she managed to get out quickly.
"I was crying in front of his building and thinking my brother was dead," she says, "Then there he was, lying on the ground!"
Wearing his Yushu Third Primary School uniform which is a little worn but tidy, and a pair of white sports shoes which are not so white anymore, he can be found every day at a temporary hospital translating for local Tibetan patients.
"She said she has a stomachache," Tsering Lodin is heard telling a doctor.
"The little boy is a tremendous help to us," says 38-year-old chief physician Gyalpo Gye, who is from the People's Hospital of Guide County in Hainan prefecture of Qinghai province.
After the quake, his hospital set up a temporary clinic in Yushu's main stadium, where many quake survivors are staying. It's a three-minute walk from Tsering Lodin's temporary tent home. His original house, not far from here, is all but reduced to rubble.
"He has been here for five days," Gyalpo Gye says. "We've got little translators like him. But he is the only one who has come here every day since he learned of our communication problems."
"Tsering Lodin never talks about his heroic actions," the physician added.
"He works from 7 am to 6 pm every day, but never accepts our offer of meals," says Han Haisheng, a 38-year-old staff member from the hospital's medical department. "He is intelligent, clever, hardworking you name it."
In fact, Tsering Lodin's bravery and kind-heartedness are shared by his younger sister, Urgyen Chotso.
The 7-year-old first-grader, who is barely a meter high, is in the same school. She pulled two classmates out of the collapsing single-story classroom.
"I had already run out of the room," she says, "but through a hole that was blown open by the quake I saw two girls still crying inside."
Without a moment's hesitation, she decided to crawl back into the room through the hole that was only big enough for her body and push out the girls one by one.
Before Urgyen Chotso could get out, her head was struck by falling debris. A deep scar can still be seen about an inch above her forehead.
"I was a little frightened," she says, "but I just wanted to help."
Speaking of Tsering Lodin and Urgyen Chotso, their parents are all smiles.
"They did well," says their father Choyang, a 35-year-old businessman. "I'm just happy for them."
"Although young and little, they've got grown-up hearts," added their mother Tsering Yutso, a 38-year-old housewife.
When asked what they wish to do when they grow up, they answered without hesitation "be a doctor."
"Because that way, I can save more lives," Tsering Lodin explains.
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