BEIJING â€" The family of Lv Lingzi, the young Chinese woman killed in the attack at the Boston Marathon, didn’t want their daughter’s name revealed, according to the Chinese consulate in New York.
But proving - if that were still needed - that there’s very little privacy in the online world, shortly afterwards, the Chinese blogosphere was feverishly transmitting it. Early Wednesday morning in China even Xinhua, the state-run news agency, was running a story by Phoenix TV, based in Hong Kong, that identified the victim not just by name - but with a photograph. The Shenyang Daily, the city in northeast China where Ms. Ling was from, also had a long article with photographs.
By early afternoon on Wednesday here in China, a day after the attack that killed three and injured more than 170, at least 12,000 people had left comments on Ms. Lv’s microblog account, where the photograph on the home page was identical to that on the Phoenix TV and Shenyang Daily reports. Her online handle was “Jingjing Dudu’s older sister.†Many netizens left candles of remembrance. (In Chinese, Lv is pronounced the way a German would say Lü. Chinese people put a person’s last name first.)
Ms. Ling, a graduate student at Boston University, loved food, judging from her Weibo account. In a very sad note, her last post - a photograph of a dish with food, with the words “my wonderful breakfast!,†sent at 9 p.m. on April 15, was reposted thousands of times.
On her account, she listed her three interests as “fine food, music, finance and economics.â€
She loved Ben and Jerry’s icecream, writing on April 6: “Ben&Jerry’s ice cream, really every flavor tastes good.â€
On March 30, she posted a photograph of a dish she had made, writing: “The first time to make kimchi pancakes! Very successful!†And on Mar. 23, sounding excited, she posted: “A new whole foods is going to open near BU!â€
