Train crash victim goes to private preschool

Xiang Weiyi, the youngest victim in the Wenzhou high-speed train crash last summer, is going to a local private kindergarten picked by her uncle.

The Yangpu District Education Bureau initially offered two public kindergartens for the three-year-old girl, who is being treated at a Shanghai hospital. But the family rejected them after locals complained that they took advantage of people's sympathy to enjoy special treatment. Public kindergartens space is hard to come by in the city.

The issue arose because the girl, known as Yi Yi, didn't meet local public kindergarten admission standards as none of her close relatives work in the city.

She was turned down by several kindergartens before her uncle turned to the Internet for help, which created a debate in the city last month about what should be done.

"The family now wants to keep a low-profile," said a bureau official surnamed Zhou. She said Xiang's uncle told her that they even planned to change her name to avoid attention.

Girl recovering very well

Her uncle has stopped updating information about the girl on her microblog.

Ailu Kindergarten was started by Yang Ailu, a woman from Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province in 2004. The girl, a Wenzhou native, went to the kindergarten's branch in the Zhongyuan area, close to her rented apartment and the hospital.

Doctors from Shanghai's Xinhua Hospital, where the girl has been undergoing a year of treatment and rehabilitation, said the girl is recovering very well and there now is no noticeable difference from most other children in how she walks.

The girl goes to the hospital for rehabilitation every morning and to the kindergarten in the afternoon to play with other children, as her family has hoped.

The girl was gloomy for a long time after the wreck, which killed her parents, her family said.

The girl was the last survivor of the crash on July 23 last year. She had been trapped for more than 21 hours before she was found. Forty people were killed in one of the country's most serious railway accidents, which also left nearly 200 others injured.