Fan Meizhong has blogs on Tianya (inactive since May 22, 2008) and Sina.com. Though he opened his Tianya blog—荒原狼的哭泣与嚎叫, or “The Cries and Howls of a Wolf in the Wilderness”— in 2006, Fan only began writing in earnest in 2008, with posts focused on critiques of China’s current education system and prospects for educational reform.
Known to his friends and colleagues as a maverick who lost several teaching jobs due to his unorthodox views and teaching methods, Fan—a graduate of Peking University—had been challenging received social and political wisdom long before he began to blog. However, Fan Meizhong’s writings received little attention until a controversial post on May 22, 2008 (ten days after the catastrophic Sichuan earthquake) catapulted him into the national spotlight both online and in traditional media.
In a post titled 那一刻地动山摇 (At the Moment the Earth Moved and Mountains Shook), Fan—who at the time was a high school teacher in Sichuan’s quake-devastated Dujiangyan—describes how he had fled his classroom and left his students to their fates at the moment the earthquake struck. Fan went on to defend his actions, asserting that his responsibilities as a teacher did not include protecting his students. Public reaction was mixed but passionate as Fan’s words sparked a moral debate among Chinese on- and offline.
CDT’s coverage on Fan Meizhong is here.
