By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-01-10 07:17

A year has ended and a new one is beginning, it is time to select whatever or whoever is the best, or the most popular. On Monday, china.rednet.cn announced that netizens at one of its forums came up with a list of 10 xiao renwu - nobodies - or "small potatoes", who have moved many people with filial love, altruism, honesty and professional devotion.

Among them, 26-year-old Yin Wuyong from Jiangsu Province, had his thick hair shaved and the skin on his scalp peeled three times. It was used as skin grafts for his 52-year-old father who suffered serious burns covering 85 percent of his body early last year.

Fang Yuming, a village woman in Hubei Province, heard unusual sounds coming from a mountain. She risked her life to stop two buses from passing by the mountain. Shortly after, rocks came tumbling down from the mountain onto the road. She had saved 80 passengers and the driver from possible death and injury. When the passengers, to show their appreciation, tried to give Fang some money, the 36-year-old woman declined. After she received 10,000 yuan ($1,380) as a reward from the provincial government, she donated the money toward the repairs of a bridge in the village.

Zhang Jianshun from Hubei, received a call one day from a punter wishing to buy a lottery ticket. Zhang, who runs a small lottery ticket sales business, carefully picked a number for the punter. The punter won 5 million yuan in the lottery. Zhang was the first one to learn about the punter's good fortune and was the first to inform the punter of his good luck.

Xu Yunling, a teacher in Henan Province, has been teaching in a remote mountainous school for 21 years. Brick by brick, she built and has maintained the three-room primary school. When it rains and floods and mudslides make the roads impassable, she keeps her students in the school and feeds them out of her own meager salary. After she began her teaching career all of the children in the village have learned to read and write. The villagers are proud of the fact that not a single youngster in their village is illiterate.

When I read the stories of these people, I could not help but admire their courage and persistence. I think a lot of netizens must have shared my thoughts for the Internet had given us an opportunity to learn about these people.

While I read their names, their deeds and looked at their pictures, I found something important was missing in the narratives. That is, I did not hear the voices of these good people. Thus, we do not know why they did what they did and what they had gone through.

In this regard, the Internet has not broken away from conventional media reporting of the good citizens among us. In fact, such reporting often has become banal as the reporters/writers use a lot of jargon and set phrases in their narratives.

As a result, these citizen heroes and heroines, except for their appearances, are presented to us as if they are all of the same mindset and share the same characteristics. The reports have even forced us to shun away from such hackneyed story-telling, because we have already read too many of them.

I only wish that, as a netizen, a reader, or a viewer, I will be able to read the words or hear the voices of these good people. I believe their stories coming from them directly must be more poignant and enlightening.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/10/2008 page8)