It was the type of story the Beijing tabloids would usually go to town on. A sweet 13-year-old girl from an intellectual family strangled to death on a public bus in front of her parents, allegedly by a crazed female conductor over a 1 yuan bus fare.
But the media was conspicuously quiet on this one. As the girl's elderly parents now try to cope with the grief of losing their only child, they are further haunted by the belief that the state-run bus company is wielding its corporate clout to smother the story.
Yan Jiqin was a pretty, cheerful, exceptionally bright teenager who had her heart set on studying law at Cambridge University. On October 4 she boarded a bus in Beijing with her parents on the way home from a shopping spree, her bag full of English books and pop music CDs she had bought.
Her 74-year-old father, Yan Sixian - who has been a physics lecturer at China's eminent Tsinghua University for decades - was weary after the day out and looked for a seat on the bus. All the seats were taken, but his wife noticed that a conductor was sitting in a seat reserved for the elderly, and she asked her to move. When she refused, a passenger got up and let the professor sit down, embarrassing the conductor, who glared at the mother and daughter.
Another female conductor took the standard 1 yuan fare from them but her humiliated colleague shouted that they should pay double. Outraged at being cheated, Jiqin exchanged angry words with the woman, who flew into a rage.
'The conductor jumped up, yanked my girl by the ponytail and grabbed her by the throat. I tried to push her off but I couldn't,' Jiqin's mother, Ms Zheng, 57, claimed. 'Jiqin fell unconscious and dropped to the ground, and then the woman kicked her.' The parents took Jiqin to a hospital in a taxi and a few hours later she was pronounced dead.
At this point, the parents contend, the bus company management went into overdrive to try to keep the story quiet.
