During the public backlash, Fan was fired from his job and denounced online and in the media. He repeatedly stated in interviews that it was not a teacher’s obligation to save students at the cost of his own life.

“I am a person pursuing freedom and justice, instead of a person to sacrifice one’s own interests for the sake of others,” Fan wrote in an article published soon after the incident. “At this moment of choosing between death and life, I will sacrifice myself only for my daughter. For other people, even including my mother, I won’t care about them in this circumstance.”

Yesterday on the 13th anniversary of the earthquake a video of Fan being interviewed on a talk show in 2012 where he repeated his earlier comments went viral on Weibo.

“What I said these years is a significant enlightenment of thought for China. My views have been a big positive influence for students,” he said in the programme. “I help them realise their own rights and come to know that we should build the right systems, rather than rely on people’s morals, to make this world become better.”

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“I am perhaps the one in China who spent the most effort in sticking to being oneself,” he said.

Internet users were divided on Fan’s comments.

“I say that his choice of running first is human nature. But he always boasts about his escape and I look down upon him,” wrote one person on Weibo.

But another user commented, “I think he did nothing wrong. It’s not necessary to criticise him from a moral aspect.” It received nearly 400 likes.

A third person said on Weibo, “It’s meaningless to use as propaganda his escape. We should remember the heroes who saved others in the earthquake and spread their spirit.”

One of those cited as a hero was Tan Qianqiu, another teacher at Dongqi Middle School in Deyang, who used his body and a desk to form a shelter for four students in the earthquake. The students were all rescued, but Tan died in the disaster.