TEEN’S ART MAY ADORN GOOGLE SITE
Teen one of 25 regional finalists in contest
Grade 10 St. Francis Xavier High student Xusheng (Sam) Yu is one of 25 regional finalists in the first Doodle 4 Google Canada contest. If his drawing receives enough votes, it has a chance to appear on the Google Canada search engine site.
If enough Canadians vote for him, a 14-year-old Edmonton boy’s Google doodle may soon grace the world’s most well-known search engine.
Google Canada has 4.8 billion searches on average per month.
Xusheng Yu, a Grade 10 student from St. Francis Xavier High School, is one of Canada’s 25 regional winners in the Doodle 4 Google contest and the only finalist from Edmonton.
“I had absolutely no idea that I was going to be regional finalist,” said Xusheng, who usually goes by Sam.
“They told me that I was regional finalist on Chinese NewYear, which is a greatday to know. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I thought, you know, thousands of people submit this, I couldn’t be top 25 in Canada, but I was.”
Contest participants from kindergarten to Grade 12 were given the prompt: “If I could invent anything, I would invent …”
Sam wanted to draw something centred around trees and the environment, and came up with the idea of inventing an electric tree.
In Sam’s doodle, there are three electric trees of various sizes. The first two, in the shape of a G and an O, are smaller, with a small wire visible at the base of the second tree. In the middle, a young girl is planting a seed. On the right, the young girl is now older, reading a book and sitting under the fully grown electric tree. A music player is plugged in at the tree’s base.
When asked where he got the idea for the doodle, Sam said: “I originally came from Beijing. In Beijing there’s lots of pollution, so I came here, and I saw the trees here, saw the environment, the grass and everything, and I thought, ‘This is great.’ This is like fantasy because it’s so nice. Then I became aware … that the environment is being destroyed every moment. This part really bothers me because it’s such a beautiful thing.”
Sam felt he couldn’t do anything because he was just a Grade 10 student, but he could spread his idea with his art. He has received the support of his high school.
Dean Rootsaert, assistant principal of St. Francis, said Sam is “a good ambassador for our school and just a good ambassador for high school kids in general.”
Regional voting ends at midnight this Friday. National finalists will attend an award ceremony at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where the winner will be announced Feb. 25, also Sam’s birthday. The date the winning doodle will appear on Google was not available.