Boston bomb victim Lu Lingzi attended elite school in China

The Chinese student killed in the Boston Marathon blasts grew up in an intellectual family in a northeastern Chinese city with gritty, industrial roots, and graduated from a highly competitive high school that routinely sends students abroad.

In Boston, where 23-year-old Lu Lingzi enrolled in graduate-level study in statistics, friends and teachers remembered her as an exceptional student and an exuberant personality who delighted in spring blossoms and culinary treats.

“The word bubbly – that’s kind of a corny word – but that describes her very well,” said Tasso Kaper, chairman of the mathematics and statistics department at Boston University. He added that Lu was “very interested” in flowers. “Spring is a very important time of year for her.”

The university on Thursday launched a scholarship fund in her name, with members of the board of trustees contributing more than US$560,000 to it, the university said on its website.

Lu was one of three people killed in Monday’s bombings that also injured more than 170 others. President Barack Obama honoured the victims and lauded Boston’s “undaunted” spirit at an interfaith service Thursday in the city’s soaring Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Back home in the Chinese city of Shenyang – where residents are still bundled in heavy coats to fend off chilly temperatures and strong winds – Lu’s family home is an apartment on the grounds of a Communist Party training academy where her grandfather was a professor, neighbours said.