The Angel

What does a real angel look like? Finally someone made it and showed it to the public! After a thousand years of religious myths of naked winged babies and fagots in white robes we finally have a model of a being that watch over people!

On that day, in just a few minutes of panic, under concrete boulders are crushed about 10,000 students together with their teachers. Double that number of parents for days after the earthquake dug away concrete, bricks, windows and furniture  using only their bare hands in order to reach flabby bloody bodies of their dead children. Dusty air was filled by sobbing of those who dug out cold bodies of their sisters, parents ...

At the same time on a nearby playground among the ruins of the city quietly flourished life. Students and teachers of one school obediently were gathered and lined up in rows, only a few minutes after the disastrous earthquake of  May 12th, 2008. The principal was wiping tears and dust from his face and called out the names - all were there, 2323 of them, none absent. Living, healthy, obviously frightened of terrible tremors and collapse of the city, but obediently lined up in rows in front of their savior, as they have practiced and learned it before.

"Angel of Sichuan," Ye Zhiping, the principal of a high school in Sangzao, in Sichuan province, China, years before the disaster knew the ground where the city and the school whose students have been entrusted to him was built upon. When he received his duty in 1990-ies, he reviewed the building and figured that it would cost around $58.000 to improve the school building against earthquake. The district authorities did not have much money, and no sense for his warnings. They gave him only a part, and the rest he collected by his own efforts and skill from various donors. The money is invested in a new reinforced concrete columns and other elements of the school building. So, one man knew, one man thought, one man believed, one man did all he could. On that fateful day 2323 people entered the school and after the cataclysm all of them had left the building, as if nothing had happened.

When you divide money invested in improving school buildings by the number of survivors, you get about $25 per student. Here in Croatia, that amount is worth two lunches in the restaurant for employees of my firm with average incomes. That money worth very modest dinner for one politician or a manager or a real estate dealer. How much would you pay in order to your brain from your smashed skull not being collected from the dust with a spoon? Or for being hugged tightly by your living child instead to place it in a plastic bag, while still shrugs the dust around you?

Of what faith is and to which religion belongs good, smart principal Ye Zhiping? Was it that for the assessment of school building he was prompted by some of the spirits of his dead ancestors or some written advice of the Buddha or a visit to Mecca or the voice of the Holy Spirit while he was on his knees praying to Jesus? We do not know. But there are more options than these mentioned - the man was seriously took the facts of the unstable area where the school was built, he used a specialist engineering knowledge and had a sense of responsibility towards the people. He has not spent his time playing "Solitaire" at the workplace, he had not calculated what pope is the Antichrist, and he was not deceived donors to buy a new Lexus hybrid or thought of how to forge a tax card to conceal the houses and other property. His reputation has been compromised asking donors in the impoverished and corrupt country to raise money for the very temple of life - a school that fosters knowledge and hope for the future.

Do you want to know what does a real angel look like? Just think about people like the principal Ye Zhiping, you have more of such around. And not so far away as China. And they do not have wings. Do you want to know what the real angel does? If you are intelligent enough to read this, then there is no sense for me to write about it any further...