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Tsinghua students accuse Tsinghua of being cold-blooded and shameless in the Zhu Ling case
By/ Er Xiang
Today is the first anniversary of Zhu Ling’s death. A year ago, Zhu Ling passed away on the day of the winter solstice, when the day is shortest and the night is longest. Yesterday, I read Zhang Lilin’s article “Tsinghua University’s Cold-bloodedness and Shamelessness in the Zhu Ling Case, How I Became a Long-term Volunteer to Help Zhu Ling”. Zhang Lilin is a student of the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University in the class of ’92. He entered Tsinghua in the same year as Zhu Ling. He was a classmate of Sun Wei in junior high school, and he also knew Bei Zhicheng, who helped Zhu Ling. Sun’s boyfriend at that time, Xie, from the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua, was in the same department as him, and their dormitories were only a few rooms apart.
In 2013, he first learned about Zhu Ling’s case from Tianya. He sympathized with Zhu Ling very much. After that, he initiated and established a foundation specifically to help Zhu Ling and Zhu Ling’s family, called the Hualin Relief Fund. For so many years, he has been silently helping Zhu Ling and Zhu Ling’s family. He is also the only administrator of the public account “Zhu Ling, We Are Together”, and has been continuously speaking out for Zhu Ling’s case for so many years.
His recent article can be interpreted as an indictment against Tsinghua, listing Tsinghua’s various malicious behaviors in handling the Zhu Ling incident. There are a total of four viewpoints. After reading the whole article, it can be said that Tsinghua is quite cold-blooded and shameless in dealing with Zhu Ling’s case, which is very infuriating!
His first point: Tsinghua is partially responsible for Zhu Ling’s illness not being treated in time.
On March 9, 1995, Zhu Ling was hospitalized for the second time. Li Shunwei, the director of the Department of Neurology, received the patient. Li Shunwei suspected thallium poisoning and contacted relevant experts. However, the chemical list provided by Tsinghua excluded the possibility of Zhu Ling’s contact with thallium, leading to the doctor’s misjudgment, which caused Zhu Ling to miss the opportunity for timely diagnosis and treatment, and the condition eventually became irreversible.
Of course, it must also be said that the doctor is also responsible here. Since he highly suspected it, why didn’t he do a screening and just believe Tsinghua’s words?
Tsinghua’s written proof that undergraduate students at Tsinghua could not come into contact with thallium salts was to evade responsibility, or the person who issued the proof was careless in doing things, we don’t know now, but this proof delayed Zhu Ling’s diagnosis and treatment, and made Zhu Ling a severely disabled person for the next thirty years, which is an indisputable fact.
In addition, the poisoning case occurred in the Tsinghua dormitory. It was also because Tsinghua’s improper management of thallium salts allowed that vicious person to easily take thallium salts out of the laboratory and repeatedly poison Zhu Ling, which caused Zhu Ling’s tragic situation. Therefore, Tsinghua is responsible for the tragedy of Zhu Ling.
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Zhang Lilin’s second point: Tsinghua University bears major responsibility for the loss of evidence, leading to the failure of the case to be solved.
On April 28, 1995, Zhu Ling was diagnosed with thallium poisoning, and it was suspected that someone had poisoned her. Zhu Ling’s parents reported the case to Tsinghua, but the Tsinghua Security Department notified the people in Zhu Ling’s dormitory, which resulted in the theft of the dormitory on April 29, and important evidence was lost. In 1998, when the police requested to inspect the sealed items, some evidence was found to be missing again. These two thefts directly led to the disappearance of the most important physical evidence in the case, making it impossible to solve the case. And after the incident, the Tsinghua Chemistry Department only compensated Zhu Ling’s family with 3,000 yuan. Because of Tsinghua’s poor management, the most important physical evidence in the Zhu Ling case was lost, and Tsinghua’s behavior is infuriating.
Zhang’s third point: Tsinghua behaved very coldly during Zhu Ling’s treatment and rescue.
As a Tsinghua student, Zhu Ling initially enjoyed the treatment of public medical care, and the treatment expenses were borne by Tsinghua. But one year after Zhu Ling was hospitalized (1996), Tsinghua stopped paying medical expenses and repeatedly urged Zhu Ling’s parents to go through the procedures for withdrawing from school.
Withdrawing from school meant that Zhu Ling would lose public medical care, which brought huge mental and economic pressure to Zhu Ling’s parents. Although they wrote letters many times to request to keep her student status, Tsinghua ignored them. It was not until April 1997, on the eve of Zhu Ling’s class graduation, that Tsinghua arranged a meeting with the family, but the school’s attitude was very cold, clearly stating that it could not keep her student status and cut off Zhu Ling’s medical security source. In November 1997, relevant departments in Beijing required Tsinghua to provide 400,000 yuan in relief funds, but Tsinghua only agreed to pay 200,000 yuan, and the other 200,000 yuan was borne by the Beijing Youth Development Foundation. Tsinghua also required to sign a one-time subsidy agreement, and also emphasized that this was “special care” and had nothing to do with judicial procedures, the purpose was to distance itself.
Zhang’s statement is consistent with the statement of Zhu Ling’s lawyer, Zhang Jie. Zhang Jie also mentioned that Tsinghua, in order not to bear Zhu Ling’s medical expenses, ordered her to withdraw from school on the grounds that her suspension could not exceed two years. Under the strong opposition of Zhu Ling’s mother, Tsinghua offered a condition that was to buy out for 200,000 yuan, and if they were to pursue responsibility, they would not give it. Zhu Ling’s family was financially very difficult at that time, and could only accept it helplessly.
Having done so many unbearable things, they were still so harsh to Zhu Ling’s family, ordering her to withdraw from school, and never issuing a graduation certificate to Zhu Ling. Because Zhu Ling did not have a university graduation certificate, her status has always been a worker, and she could not get a low-income allowance, and the medical insurance problem could not be solved either. In the end, Zhang Jie made Zhu Ling an employee of his company, and paid her a salary of a few thousand yuan every month to ensure Zhu Ling’s medical insurance.
Zhang Lilin said that Tsinghua’s practice was equivalent to pushing the victim of poisoning on campus out of the school and letting the victim fend for themselves. He deeply felt Tsinghua’s cold-bloodedness and ruthlessness, and the victim’s tragedy was largely due to Tsinghua’s own mismanagement. In the end, it was still under the requirement of the superior department that they bargained and compensated half of the 400,000 yuan. It is really shocking and extremely indignant at Tsinghua’s practices back then. Where is the justice of heaven, where is the conscience? Which inhumane leader made this decision, I really want to curse!
After the 200,000 yuan buyout, from 1998 to 2012, for 15 years, Tsinghua University had no contact with Zhu Ling’s family, never made a phone call, and never wrote a letter, completely ignoring the Zhu Ling incident. Until 2013, after the Zhu Ling incident became a social hot topic, the school, under the promotion of the outside world, had several contacts with Zhu Ling’s family. In September 2013, Tsinghua President Chen, along with two management personnel and an alumnus, visited Zhu Ling and her family. The Tsinghua alumnus gave Zhu Ling’s father 100,000 yuan in cash on the spot. This was the only time Tsinghua took the initiative to try to reconcile with Zhu Ling’s family. However, this action, because of the public exposure of a Weibo article, triggered the school’s concern about potential public opinion risks, stopped all subsequent contacts, and the internal leaders even stated, “From now on, Tsinghua is not afraid of anything”, and explicitly refused to contact Zhu Ling’s family again.
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Zhang Lilin’s fourth point: Tsinghua University has been evading responsibility.
In 1995, when a reporter from Beijing TV station interviewed, Tsinghua refused to answer whether there was thallium. When a reporter from China Youth Daily interviewed, Xue, the deputy director of the Department of Chemistry, claimed that Zhu Ling’s experiments could not possibly come into contact with thallium-containing substances, and that Tsinghua undergraduates could not come into contact with thallium. But the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau later found invoices and letters of introduction for Tsinghua’s purchase of thallium salts. In 1996, Tsinghua admitted that the Department of Engineering Physics had purchased thallium. Zhang Lilin, through the SCI scientific index database, found that in 1996, Tsinghua University published a paper on thallium salts in the Dutch academic journal “Analytical Chemistry”, and the first and third authors were Professor Tong and Professor Li from Tsinghua. According to the general cycle of chemical experiment research and paper publication, the relevant experimental work of this paper happened between 1994 and 1995, that is, during the period of Zhu Ling’s poisoning. And at that time, Sun Wei was doing research in the laboratory where Tong and Li were, and was the only undergraduate who could legally come into contact with thallium.
But in 1997, the Tsinghua General Affairs Office and the Deputy Secretary successively stated: the school’s chemical management is very good, and they manage the drugs in accordance with regulations and reported the case in a timely manner, without any responsibility. The school has always refused to admit that there were problems in laboratory management.
So far, Tsinghua has never admitted any responsibility in the Zhu Ling incident.
Last year, Zhu Ling passed away, and the official Tsinghua University issued an article calling Zhu Ling “our school’s 1992 alumnus”. You can see how cold and cruel you were to the alumnus in your mouth back then? And you haven’t issued a graduation certificate to this so-called alumnus until now! Tsinghua, you owe Zhu Ling an apology and a graduation certificate!
Of course, I also know very well that I have always referred to Tsinghua here, but the ones who really made these decisions were the leaders of Tsinghua at that time, not the current leaders of Tsinghua. Who exactly made these inhumane and bottomless decisions back then? According to Zhang Lilin’s article, Zhu Ling’s parents wrote letters to the then President of Tsinghua University from 1997, begging the school to pay Zhu Ling’s medical expenses first, but the President’s secretary refused to sign and receive them. The President of Tsinghua at that time was Wang Dazhong (President of Tsinghua from 1994 to 2003). Zhu Ling’s parents had to send this letter by registered mail to the then Secretary of the Tsinghua Party Committee on September 3, 1997, and there was no response after it was sent out, until a year later there was a response, and the reason why there was a response was not because they had a conscience, but because the relevant departments required Tsinghua to provide comfort funds. At this time, according to the information found online, the Secretary of the Tsinghua Party Committee was He Meiying (September 1995 – February 2002), but Zhang Lilin’s article mentioned that the secretary who came forward to meet Zhu Ling’s parents at that time was Zhang Zaixing. I checked, Zhang Zaixing was the then Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee.
We also need to distinguish between the attitude of the Tsinghua official and the attitude of the Tsinghua students. Many Tsinghua students I know are also deeply ashamed of Tsinghua’s handling of the Zhu Ling incident. This classmate Zhang Lilin, in the style of Tsinghua students who have always been rigorous in their work, thoroughly investigated the actions of Tsinghua after Zhu Ling’s accident. Zhang Lilin’s article also mentioned some shocking discoveries in his more than a year of investigation and interviews: First, there have been many non-natural student deaths at Tsinghua University in the past two decades, but there has never been any news that Tsinghua has admitted its own management responsibility. On the contrary, he saw the news that Tsinghua sued the parents of the deceased students for making trouble. In Zhang Lilin’s original words: “There are more than one wronged souls wandering in Tsinghua Garden”.
Second, the vast majority of Tsinghua students know very little about these non-natural deaths. Many of his classmates, like him, only learned about the tragic case of Zhu Ling that happened around them from the media more than ten years after graduation. And in his investigation, most of the students and graduates of Tsinghua in recent years have not heard of the Zhu Ling incident, nor do they know about other student deaths. I think that this kind of understatement of the death case, the fear of taking responsibility, is one of the root causes of the continuous occurrence of such incidents.
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If what Zhang Lilin’s article says is true, then Tsinghua has indeed gone too far! Is this how Tsinghua treats their students? Should those outstanding students consider it when they apply for Tsinghua in the future? The current leaders of Tsinghua should also be responsible for the disgusting things done by the managers of that year, or make up for the mistakes of that year. I hope they will bravely come forward and give Zhu Ling a belated apology and reissue a graduation certificate to Zhu Ling in the lifetime of Zhu Ling’s parents. If possible, they should also compensate Zhu Ling’s father and mother economically as much as possible to comfort Zhu Ling’s spirit in heaven.
Evading responsibility and covering up mistakes is not a solution to the problem, it will only make the reputation worse and worse. Bravely admitting mistakes and correcting them is worthy of the reputation of China’s top universities, and can make Tsinghua’s motto “Self-improvement and carrying virtue” no longer an empty slogan. Knowing shame and then being brave, knowing mistakes and making up for them, although it is very difficult, although it requires courage, but this is the only correct approach. Only in this way can we comfort Zhu Ling’s spirit in heaven, only in this way can all Tsinghua students no longer feel cold, only in this way can we quell the dissatisfaction and anger of all those who care about Zhu Ling, and only in this way can we live up to the three words Tsinghua.
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