Tibetan rag picker ‘most beautiful girl’ on internet

BEIJING - A 15-year-old Tibetan girl became popular among netizens after a Chinese internet forum referred to her as “the most beautiful girl” for putting trash into the bin at the Shanghai Expo Garden.

The website “Who is the Most Beautiful Girl at the Expo?”, which rated the status of the teenager, was showered with comments after a visitor to the Expo posted on Sina.com the video footage featuring the girl picking up a discarded bottle of soft drink which was kicked around by several visitors, China Daily reported Monday.

The girl, Drolma Chutso, from quake-hit Yushu county in Qinghai province, was among 300 underprivileged teenagers on a free trip to Shanghai and the Expo.

“Look how this young girl from a disaster area makes our urban life better. Better City, Better Life’ shouldn’t be just a slogan,” heiguozi123 commented on the forum.

Others were more measured in their responses: “As a matter of fact, there are disaster areas in Shanghai,” responded mobilewolf. “The state of emptiness and the sense of cold detachment is our moral disaster area.”

According to a sanitation worker, surnamed Chen, one of the 7,000 workers responsible for cleaning the Expo Garden, he often asks visitors to throw trash in nearby waste bins, but is ignored and people discard empty food and drink packaging on the ground.

“They tell me that a trashcan 5 or 10 metres from them is too far away and they were too lazy to go,” Chen said. “It would make our work much easier if visitors could lift a finger.”