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Two years old Chinese girl is run over... passersby ignore her

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Post  Guest Tue Oct 18, 2011 5:51 am

Toddler left dying after hit and run prompts soul searching in China

Footage of a two-year-old girl being hit by a truck and then ignored by passersby in Foshan has been watched 1.5m times

Tania Branigan in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 October 2011 12.42 BST

The van driver stops for a moment, presumably realising in horror that he has just hit a toddler. Then he drives on – crushing her again beneath his rear wheels.

What follows is arguably even more horrifying: a dozen passersby ignore two-year-old Yueyue as she lies in agony in a busy market in southern China. Several glance at her bloodied body before continuing, while others walk or wheel around it.

Their apparent indifference means that she is hit again, by a truck. Surveillance camera footage from the busy wholesale market in Foshan, Guangdong, shows that it takes seven minutes before a woman finally stops to help.

The young girl's fate has prompted horrified soul searching in China since the images were aired on a local television station. The footage has been watched more than 1.5m times on the popular Youku video sharing site.

Shanghai Daily reported that the little girl had died of her injuries in hospital after the collision on Thursday, but other state media including the news agency Xinhua said she remained in a deep coma.

A doctor surnamed Peng told China Daily that medics had declared her braindead on Sunday and she could die at any time. He said at best she would remain in a vegetative state on life support.

The widespread reluctance to help strangers has already lead to an anguished public debate in the country. Many say they are too scared, blaming extortion attempts by people who have accused Good Samaritans of causing their injuries – and judges who have backed such claims. But some talked of a new moral low after seeing passersby – including a woman holding a small girl by the hand – walk around a two-year-old lying in a pool of blood.

China Daily claimed that the woman who stopped, a rubbish collector, was even told by shopkeepers to mind her own business when she tried to find out the child's identity.

Many internet users expressed fury, describing those who ignored Yueyue as less than human. "Where did conscience go … What has happened to the Chinese people?" wrote one, Reissent1987.

Several pointed out that it was a rubbish collector – among the poorest and often worst-educated members of society – who stopped to help, while others carried on.

But some said that people should ask themselves how willing they would have been to help before criticising.

One said that while the footage was heartbreaking he would have been "numb" to Yueyue too. "Would you be willing to throw your entire family's savings into the endless whirlpool of accident compensation? Aren't you afraid of being put into jail as the perpetrator? Have you ever considered that your whole family could lose happiness only because you wanted to be a great soul?" he wrote.

Chinese media said the two drivers who had hit Yueyue were now in police custody.

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Post  Constance Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:10 am

You know, I have three daughters from China and I have been to China three times and I've had a good look around. And I've read most of the contemporary books on China and scores of older books. I feel close to China. I have a love/hate relationship with the country. study

So I can tell you, the remark in the news piece that the Chinese lack the Good Samaritan spirit, don't want to get involved, and bypass accident victims is--as much as you can generalize about a culture--true. But it is especially an urban problem. In the countryside, where most people live, there is more of a community spirit and more personal accountability for one's actions.

The teeming millions in the cities shove and push each other and everyone is out for himself. The money mentality rules.

I have been disgusted with the Chinese and the Chinese government for its neglect of Chinese orphans. There is hardly any opportunity (or interest) in China to contribute to a helping non-profit organizations of any kind. Americans and other Western cultures can feel very proud of the money that is donated to charitable organizations. Most everything good about Chinese orphanages is there through the generosity of Western donors. I am active with a charity that raises money for orphaned children. We work in partnership with the Amity Foundation, based in Nanjing. Take a look, it's interesting and will make you feel better after reading this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amity_Foundation. When we started the partnership, we faced a lot of criticism from adoptive parents about partnering with a "Christian organization." The truth is, the Christian communities are where you will find humanitarian spirit.

The Chinese spirit of looking out for one's self goes back even to the Confucian custom of concentrating one's efforts and actions to one's own familty. Where is the quickening in the heart of being morally good for the sake of a stranger? The aloofness to moral virtue poses the question of What is basic to man's humanity to man? Is man born a moral being?

I know so many, so very many, wonderful Chinese people from Mainland China, Taiwan, and I also know many very wonderful Chinese-Americans. The best parents I know. We go to Chinese school on Saturdays. We have been there for 14 years. I have virtually seen a generation of young Chinese-Americans grow up, and their parents have been only welcoming and friendly to me; I am a stand-out Caucasian, an outsider. Many have expressed shame to me about the Chinese practice (much less than it was 20 years ago) of abandoning baby girls. Come to think of it, most of my favorite people are Chinese or Chinese-American. The teachers at Chinese school are so dedicated and patient. While the children are in class, I sit with Agnes and Mr. Huang at what I call the "senior citizens table." I am almost 55, Agnes (who is ethnic Chinese and who was an orphan raised in Malaysia by Italian nuns) is 90, and Mr. Huang is 85 and is from Sichwan (a highly educated man who was one of the "Flying Tigers" during WW11.) Every week he brings me a book or an article to read; he makes up math puzzles for Madeleine who is 17. He is always excited to teach me something new about the Chinese language. One Mother's Day, Agnes gave me a crochet piece of swans that she made many years ago.A very meaningful gift. They are two most fascinating people! This past Saturday, the calligraphy teacher offered to tutor Madeleine after class. Elisabeth's guzheng teacher ( a kind of Chinese harp) loves her like a daughter. She is always fussing over her in a loving way.

So I must tell you, I am most confused about the Chinese. The hell that the Communists heaped on China during the last century is the worst of moral failures. Millions of Chinese participated in the Cultural Revolution.

So I leave you with the question, Is man born a moral being? Are we born with the innate desire to help our fellow man? Or is it a learned, conditioned reflex? Left to ourselves, with no guiding moral culture, do we just step on each other? Or what?

This article, and what it raises about human nature--not just the Chinese--is very distressing.

Your thoughts?
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Post  eddie Tue Oct 18, 2011 5:13 pm

All I can really say is that although London can be a hard city- and it's getting harder- that wouldn't have happened here. Somebody would have helped.
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Post  Guest Tue Oct 18, 2011 7:54 pm

eddie wrote:All I can really say is that although London can be a hard city- and it's getting harder- that wouldn't have happened here. Somebody would have helped.
...and yet the image of the boy with a broken jaw being helped to his feet so his backpack could be fleeced is a haunting one of what may come. There's a beach in Tasmania where, a few centuries ago, men, women and children were buried up to their necks in sand while a milling crowd took bets on how many kicks it would take to sever the buried victims' heads. The victims were victims because they were black.

That's a really thought-provoking post Constance.

edit: Tasmania is in Australia...


Last edited by blue moon on Tue Oct 18, 2011 10:23 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Post  Guest Tue Oct 18, 2011 9:44 pm

I was very sad when I saw the news...

As I know almost nothing about China I didn't condemn a whole country, a very big one for that but at the same time I thought the same as Eddie... I couldn't imagine that happening here. But if it has raised a debate in China that's because of course there are many people there who felt as sad as us about it.

Like you said, Constance, it also made me think about humans... not just the Chinese ones.

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Post  Guest Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:02 pm

There was a tv show here where the competitors had to travel from here to Peking with no money. And people offered them their houses to sleep and to have dinner and took them in their vehicles.

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Post  Constance Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:05 pm

From The New York Times--

Chinese Debate Aiding Strangers After Toddler’s Critical Injury
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
The accident is terrible to watch.

A toddler, roughly 2 years old, walks absent-mindedly down a narrow street in a market district of Foshan, a large city in southern China, when she is hit by a large white van. The van stops with the child underneath — the driver apparently only aware at that point of what might have happened — but then continues forward, the rear wheels crushing the girl a second time.

Closed-circuit camera footage of the horrible accident, which appears to have occurred on Thursday, has been viewed more than a half-million times in China.

But it was the response of many Chinese — who walked, drove or bicycled past the listless body of the toddler lying in a busy urban street — that has created an uproar and touched off a debate in China about the proper response of passers-by to tragic accidents. [Warning: Video of the accident and its aftermath is extremely disturbing.]

The front page of China’s Guangzhou Daily featured the grief-stricken parents of the girl.
The story rocketed to the top of Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, over the weekend, Shanghaiist reported. Many saw in the casual disregard of those who did not help a symbol of an almost Hobbesian state of struggle, while others argued that Good Samaritans have been punished in the past for intervening in such episodes.

“This society is seriously ill. Even cats and dogs shouldn’t be treated so heartlessly,” one person posted to Sina Weibo, Agence-France Presse reported.

Another poster, named Johnny Yao and quoted by The Daily Telegraph, writes: “Everyone is praising the rubbish-collecting granny for helping, but isn’t it normal to help someone who is wounded or dying? This just shows how abnormal is the moral situation in this society! The sad Chinese, poor China, are we even rescuable?”

For several minutes the child writhes on the ground as more than a dozen people pass by. Some on scooters stop and glance while others simply drive straight by, avoiding the girl, whose injuries appear evident, but doing nothing to help. At one point, an even larger truck appears to drive over her again. Still moving, the girl is then ignored by a mother walking with her own child.

Finally a woman taking out trash picks up the girl and moves her to the side of the road before her distraught parents arrive.

There were conflicting reports on Monday about the status of the girl, identified as Yueyue. Shanghaiist reported that she had succumbed to her head injuries, but others reported that she was still holding on:

Mother of girl run over and ignored in Guangdong market says Yueyue still in ICU, but some sensation in limbs: http://t.co/4AqQKB9vMon Oct 17 13:18:59 via webMark MacKinnon/马凯
markmackinnon
The Daily Telegraph identified the woman who finally rescued Yueyue as a 58-year-old street cleaner named Chen Xianmei. While some praised her, others lashed out, saying she intervened only to seek out the spotlight, according to a review of Weibo postings by Storyful.

It is not the first time suspicion has fallen on a Good Samaritan in China. The Xinhua news agency linked the episode to a perception of declining morals “as profit and materialism are perceived to be affecting society’s values”:

A strong chorus of opinion on the Internet says laws should exempt Samaritans from liability, yet laws themselves cannot solve society’s morality dilemma.

Cao Lin, a China Youth Daily commentator, said in a signed article published on Monday that the worry of liability should not be an excuse for not helping, and this case exposes the decline of humanity in Chinese society.
Less than two months ago, a bus driver was falsely accused by passers-by of knocking down an elderly woman in the middle of Nantong city after he stopped to help the woman, who was lying on the ground. The 81-year-old woman apologized to the driver, Yin Hongbin, but the news ricocheted around the Chinese press. The state-run China Daily headlined: “False charges deter lending elderly hand.”

“According to Yin, the woman cried ’someone please help me’ when he approached her. After he had got the woman to stand up, a villager passed by and accused him of knocking her down,” the paper reported. “The woman, though, told the villager ‘it’s not him’ and let him go.”

In January, China Daily highlighted the need for better protection for Good Samaritans in China with an anecdote:

After falling in a downtown street and lying on the cold pavement, face down, for half an hour, during which no passers-by moved to help him, an 83-year-old man died. Hearing this story, what would you call this society? Cold-hearted?

In fact, the pedestrians in the southern China city of Fuzhou wanted to help when they found the old man lying on the ground last Wednesday. Two women tried to help the old man up. But one of the onlookers said: “Better not touch him. It will be hard for you to put it clearly later on.”

The two women hesitated and finally stood up. Using their cellphone, they called the police and first-aid center. But by the time the ambulance arrived, the old man had died.
The problem, according to the writer, Liu Shinan, a high-ranking editor at the paper, is that many in China worry that they will be found liable for the injuries that they are seeking to alleviate.

The fear is not unfounded: in 2006, a man who helped an elderly woman to the hospital was dragged to court by her family and later made to pay a large share of her medical bills, Mr. Liu writes:

The verdict said that “according to common sense,” it was highly possible that the defendant had bumped into the old woman, given that he was the first person to get off the bus when the old woman was pushed down in front of the bus door and, “according to what one would normally do in this case,” Peng would have left soon after sending the woman to the hospital instead of staying there for the surgical check. “His behavior obviously went against common sense.”

This “reasoning” horrified, and angered, the whole nation. From then on, the number of pedestrians helping old people in need has signifcantly decreased. Using search engines online, one can get dozens of stories of old people left lying on the ground without any passers-by giving a helping hand. Netizens have even coined a new phrase for it – “sequel of the Peng Yu case.”
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Post  Guest Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:34 pm

That's the part I didn't understand... that helping others in the street can make them look as the attackers. I find it very strange.

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Post  Dick Fitzwell Wed Oct 19, 2011 3:02 am

I watched the video. And I would suggest that everyone else not watch it.

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Post  Constance Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:57 pm

Wise advice, Paladin. I'm not going to watch it. I'm very disappointed that it was made public. Is it inevitable that it was made public, or is there some way of stoping a piece of film? I think the former.
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Post  Nah Ville Sky Chick Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:44 am

Constance wrote:Wise advice, Paladin. I'm not going to watch it. I'm very disappointed that it was made public. Is it inevitable that it was made public, or is there some way of stoping a piece of film? I think the former.

I agree, I can't believe it was made public. If this child had been American, British, Australian etc etc there is no way it would have been allowed to be shown.
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Post  Dick Fitzwell Thu Oct 20, 2011 3:08 am

Nah Ville Sky Chick wrote:I agree, I can't believe it was made public. If this child had been American, British, Australian etc etc there is no way it would have been allowed to be shown.

I think you are incorrect.

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Post  Nah Ville Sky Chick Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:08 am

Paladin wrote:
Nah Ville Sky Chick wrote:I agree, I can't believe it was made public. If this child had been American, British, Australian etc etc there is no way it would have been allowed to be shown.

I think you are incorrect.

Fair enough, I shouldn't have mentioned the other countries as I am not too sure, I will just stick to what I know about. If the child had been British and it had happened in the UK it would not have been allowed to be shown.
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Post  Dick Fitzwell Thu Oct 20, 2011 6:41 am

Well I'm glad your government is protecting you by censoring your internet and television.

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Post  LaRue Thu Oct 20, 2011 8:04 am

What right do we have to watch that? It's horrible.

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Post  Dick Fitzwell Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:53 pm

LaRue wrote:What right do we have to watch that? It's horrible.

I am so glad you don't live in my country.

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Post  precinct14 Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:33 pm

Paladin wrote:
LaRue wrote:What right do we have to watch that? It's horrible.

I am so glad you don't live in my country.

Why's that, then?
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Post  Nah Ville Sky Chick Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:51 pm

Paladin wrote:Well I'm glad your government is protecting you by censoring your internet and television.

Nothing to do with our Government, the great British public would be up in arms.
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Post  Guest Thu Oct 20, 2011 9:45 pm

I understand it would be better to not show the images, for the little girl.

But I don't think they're that hard to watch. Maybe we're used to see horrible things on TV and we don't even "believe" (although we know it's true) what we're watching. Or maybe I should speak for myself...

I once read an article about why there is so much misery in the world and we keep living as though it didn't have anything to do with us, that it doesn't affect us as much as if we have it in front of us. It said that we don't believe it.

Edit: I mean that the images by themselves didn't shock me. It shocked me what I knew from them: that the little girl was run over and people didn't help her.

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Post  Guest Thu Oct 20, 2011 10:11 pm

asdf wrote:I understand it would be better to not show the images, for the little girl.

But I don't think they're that hard to watch. Maybe we're used to see horrible things on TV and we don't even "believe" (although we know it's true) what we're watching. Or maybe I should speak for myself...

I once read an article about why there is so much misery in the world and we keep living as though it didn't have anything to do with us, that it doesn't affect us as much as if we have it in front of us. It said that we don't believe it.

Edit: I mean that the images by themselves didn't shock me. It shocked me what I knew from them: that the little girl was run over and people didn't help her.

...I think you're right about everyone becoming desensitised (anaesthetised). I didn't think of it till you pointed it out, but it's shocking that people stood around and did nothing, and it's kind of shocking that people are voyeuristic about it. Is that the right word? I'm not condemning anyone, by the way. I never throw stones, having committed most sins. My comment is about desensitisation.

edit: It's like there's a disconnect or something. Like we've all been shocked senseless.

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Post  Constance Thu Oct 20, 2011 11:11 pm

Well said, Moonie.

I didn't mean that I wanted to censor the film. I'm just sad that people uuse the media to post something like that.
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Post  Dick Fitzwell Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:56 am

Nah Ville Sky Chick wrote:Nothing to do with our Government, the great British public would be up in arms.

Who gives a fuck? I have the right to watch whatever the fuck I want imo. I'll watch the video again, just for you.

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Post  Nah Ville Sky Chick Fri Oct 21, 2011 7:51 pm

Paladin wrote:
Nah Ville Sky Chick wrote:Nothing to do with our Government, the great British public would be up in arms.

Who gives a fuck? I have the right to watch whatever the fuck I want imo. I'll watch the video again, just for you.

That's probably why you are completely fucked up in the first place, sicko bom
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Post  LaRue Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:06 am

Paladin wrote:
LaRue wrote:What right do we have to watch that? It's horrible.

I am so glad you don't live in my country.
I'm an American like you, dimwit.

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Post  Dick Fitzwell Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:41 am

LaRue wrote:I'm an American like you, dimwit.

I didn't say you weren't American.

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