Poisoning, death of Fudan student recalls disturbing case of Zhu Ling
Papers recall the disturbing case of Zhu Ling, a Tsinghua student poisoned 18 years ago; suspect was relative of senior cadre
The strange and tragic death by poisoning of a postgraduate student - possibly by his room-mate - at a prestigious university in Shanghai last week prompted editorials across the nation.
The incident not only saddened the public, but drew attention to the mainland's education system and a similar incident at a Beijing university almost 20 years ago.
Huang Yang, a doctoral student of Shanghai Medical College at Fudan University, died on Wednesday from multiple organ failure. He drank water from a dispenser in his dormitory on April 1 and was critically ill within hours. A few days later, investigators established Huang had ingested N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a toxic compound that is the by-product of a number of chemical processes. His room-mate, another medical student who had written several papers on NDMA, was detained and is the only suspect.
Huang, 28, came from a poor family in rural Sichuan. He was academically gifted, winning a number of university scholarships, and, according to his peers, kind and hard-working. He had volunteered in Anhui and Tibet during his studies, and was preparing to return to Tibet at the time of the tragedy.
Huang had even emptied the water out the drinking machine and cleaned it after he sipped the strange-smelling water, to save his room-mate from drinking it. Even the suspect, also a gifted student, gained a measure of public sympathy.
Many media reports drew parallels with the case and that of Zhu Ling, who was poisoned 18 years ago at Beijing's Tsinghua University. The 19-year-old woman student was poisoned twice with thallium, an acutely toxic element. Thallium poisoning is hard to detect, and Zhu was in hospital for days until a middle-school classmate sought help online and confirmed the poisoning.
One of her room-mates, the granddaughter of a senior government official and the only student of Zhu's acquaintance with access to thallium, was detained for eight hours as the only suspect before being released. The case was never solved.
