BEIJING: An 18-year-old Chinese student has been hailed as “underpants man” after he rescued an elderly couple from a fire wearing only his briefs.
Senior pupil, Zhu Ye (pic), at the Tongliang No 2 Secondary School in southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality, discovered that his neighbour’s flat was on fire on the evening of Oct 16.
With no time to put on clothes, he rushed to the flat in his underpants and found an elderly couple inside.
It turned out that the old man was charging his electric wheelchair, the battery of which had exploded and caught fire.
The elderly woman, also surnamed Zhu, said she was struck dumb by the blaze and did not even notice that her legs had caught fire.
Zhu calmly evacuated the couple, unplugged the battery’s power cord and removed it from the flat before carrying buckets of water from his home to put out the fire.
He then called their compound’s security guards, who helped the couple clean their flat.
The couple hid the incident from their daughter, fearing that she would be worried about them.
The security guards notified the daughter the next day.
The woman, surnamed Jiang, was angry with herself for not being around her parents when the accident happened.
She then felt great gratitude towards Zhu.
In an interview with the local television station, Jiang thanked the young man who “saved my parents in his underpants”.
Her remark won Zhu the nickname “underpants man”.
Jiang also took fruit and milk to the rescuer’s school to thank him in person.
She said: “If I had a daughter, I would marry her to him.”
Zhu said he was frightened when he saw the fire but acted without thinking much.
He said he also used emergency safety knowledge he learned at school.
Zhu’s teacher said he was not surprised to hear about Zhu’s heroic act, because “he often helped other students”.
Zhu is also an outstanding badminton player who has won district championships in two consecutive years.
“Perhaps the young man did not foresee his underpants stealing his heroic act’s thunder,” one online observer said.
“Superman also saves people wearing his underpants on the outside,” said another.
“He should be given a Good Samaritan award and should be given bonus points for his gaokao,” a third person said, referring to the preferential policy that awards bonus points to candidates of the national college entrance examinations.
“In Sichuan and Chongqing, the biggest recognition a person can give the younger generation is marrying their children to them,” another person from the region said. - South China Morning Post
