Foreigner Helps Fainted Passerby While Locals Stare and Take Photos

Foreigner Helps Fainted Passerby While Locals Stare and Take Photos
Apr 15, 2013 By eChinacities.com

Although this doesn’t paint Chinese pedestrians in a particularly positive image, it’s at least a slight improvement on recent foreigner related news making national headlines here.

During the afternoon of April 10, a young man fainted outside the exit of the Guangrong subway station on Wuhan’s subway line 2, and was described by witness Ma as being “as floppy as a pancake.”

It was then that a Pakistani student named Ahmed Waqas came to the rescue, and took some water from a passerby in an attempt to revive the fainted commuter. After about 15 minutes the man gradually came round, and Ahmed asked him if he had any friends or people close to him that could look after him. The man was eventually helped into a taxi that took him to a nearby hospital.

After the scene concluded, Ahmed told reporters (in fluent Chinese no less!) that he felt it was very strange that most people around him were filming or taking photos of the incident instead of helping. “Why were they doing that? As an ordinary passerby, I felt I just had to do something to help.”

Reporters then asked him if he was worried about being cheated by the man who’d fainted—unfortunately it's an all-to-common scam here for someone to pretend they’re hurt in public and sue anyone who comes to their assistance.

“I wasn’t worried about that,” Ahmed said. “There were many witnesses who saw what happened.”

See also: Guangdong Man Has Live Eel Pulled From Intestines

Source: Ifeng News

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Keywords: passersby take photos foreigner helps fainted passerby

7 Comments

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chamaflauge

Just crazy.....People are just heartless here...No kind of empathy at all. Honestly the psyche of Chinese are some of the worst I have ever experienced...It kind of makes you not want to be human.

May 10, 2013 18:56 Report Abuse

CKW27

China is a pathetically confused and backward nation.

Apr 20, 2013 05:11 Report Abuse

fdawei

On of these days the Chinese will wake up and realize they must help their fellow citizens. Their minds freeze when they see someone in trouble and they immediately yank out their cameras or phones to photograph what's going on rather than lend a hand or even call the police. Children from primary school onward should be taught the essentials of lending a hand to those in need, almost like the boy scouts and girl guides in the west who promise "to do their best to help those in need." We have a long way to go in China to instill the essence of being a good Samaritan.

Apr 18, 2013 10:11 Report Abuse

crimochina

this is by design. the ccp does to force people to see their fellow citizens as someone they can not trust. also this is why they fool people into thinking there is hyper competition in this country. there really is not. if you don't believe me, get on a bus and ask yourself "is this the best driver they can find? "

Apr 16, 2013 22:24 Report Abuse

fish79

They just dont give a shit.....

Apr 16, 2013 15:46 Report Abuse

mjr862000

People here seem to think the worse of others so easily the foreigners about chinese and the chinese about foreigners. "what we have here is a faluire to communicate." we seem to forget human nature is not to want to get involved with other people's problems. when i have problem with someone here chinese or otherwise i dont blame thier culture but them personally who knows what kind of people were on the street that day the student may have just gotten thier first and the situation for the people who came afterwards was just too strange for them to know how to handle it, chinese have very limited experince dealing with other cultures and it is not the common chinese people's fault for that. we from countries that are formally of British heritage or European or African and Sothern Asian countries for that matter have a great number of different cultures in our home countries we have seen and been with people from around world and have lived abroad. most chinese haven't we are the different ones in this world not the chinese. Try to remeber that!

Apr 15, 2013 21:36 Report Abuse

alpha3305

China is the only country I know where people are afraid to help others in need. But the bigger problem is that 'if' someone is trying to cheat them, the local police and government actually believes them over the truth. Now you give the public a fear of never helping someone in need and a government telling you to never have an emotional attachment to human life. The last thing that really bothered me was the reporter shocked the student could speak fluently. Is that the stigma of being foreign, that we're stupid and unable to communicate if necessary? The true is we try to speak and learn the language but get treated like performance animals. Roll over, speak, play dead....It's cute he thinks he's people!

Apr 15, 2013 20:36 Report Abuse