Time for good Samaritans to step forward
- Details
- Category: Charity Ningbo
- Published: Tuesday, 17 December 2013 08:59
As I crossed a busy road in the sprawling center of Beijing the other day, yet another fast car came swerving around the bend - against the light, of course - just short of running over the tops of my boots. And as I instinctively froze on the tips of my toes, a skill which many people in this country seem to have involuntarily mastered, I felt my heart almost skip a beat.
This was not long after a woman in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang Province, who, several days ago, was not nearly as lucky in avoiding one of China's countless road collisions: She wound up knocked off her scooter and pinned beneath a car.
Ever so fortunately for her, she was pulled out by the quick and selfless actions of more than 10 people, including motorists and pedestrians, who together managed to lift the vehicle trapping her and pulled her out to safety - an act of goodwill that she later graciously thanked them for.
It was a scene starkly opposite to that witnessed just a day earlier in the province's city of Jinhua, west of Ningbo, where passersby responded to an old man who had toppled from his bicycle by forming a "safety island" around the motionless senior - stopping short of lending a hand. They worried that when he came to, he would sue those who had tried to help him.
A police officer eventually arrived on scene, and the man was taken to hospital. Luckily for him, despite the lack of immediate care and attention he received from passersby, he was fine and doctors treated him only for minor injuries before releasing him.