Extra! Extra! Police and prostitutes, journalists and propaganda departments, and kids and condoms
Time to stock up on face masks
Olympic condoms are faster, higher, stronger
Shanghai Tattoo now selling Chinese indie rock CDs
Who are the top 10 foreign athletes in China?
Chinasmack brings terrible news of a woman who drowned in the Huangpu River as dozens watched and did absolutely nothing. (The video, probably taken by phone cam, shows the woman drowning and could be a little sickening to watch)
The woman had accidentally reversed off the ferry in her car. Her husband and 18-year-old son were not in the car at the time, but were forced to watch helplessly as it sank into the river as workers and bystanders stopped them from jumping in.
The car took several minutes to sink, but nobody came to the rescue of the mother. Netizens noted that there was a police/rescue boat that was clearly next to the sinking car, and wondered why it hadn't done anything.
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The person who took the footage must be the first to be shot for cold blooded "do nothing".
This speaks volumes about China's past/present/future - fucking cowards.
It looks like they're waiting for that police boat(?) to do something. Is there a full video?
bad drivers :(
ps i cant believe people 'stopped' the family from jumping in???
Thats sick, actually thats China, the dad is a big coward and so is everyone else there.
This is sick and appalling. Nothing could have prevented me from jumping into that water, and I would have been hysterical if anyone tried to prevent me. And it would not matter if the person inside the car was related to me or not, and whether I could swim or not. Life is cheap in China.
Maybe this is just another misguided ad, this time for VW
Well, people not helping you can find everywhere. If you look, you will find similar cases in almost every country.
If cars would regularly drop into the Huangpu, there would certainly be procedures in place for dealing with such incident. In the absence of which, everyone waits for instructions - which won't come.
And, about jumping in to help, I do not know when this event occurred, but if it was during the freezing cold days of Chinese New Year, I sincerely doubt that an untrained person would have survived a dive into Huangpu river for more than 15 minutes, before becoming an additional casualty.
You have foiled my attempts to take over the Recent Comments box.
Watch this video "HOW TO ESCAPE A CAR UNDERWATER"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFVCC-Hk_ZI
This might save future lives :)
@ Pirx
Granted the conditions might have been freezing, but if it was your own wife or mother ...
I have to agree that it was probably too cold for anyone to jump in. But count on Shanghaiist and Chinasmack to limit their reporting to just posting a mobile video off youtube. Way to go !
(no offense, but i hope SH-ist goes under soon, you've become SERIOUSLY redundant).
If they're redundant, why are you still reading?
if only you knew how my readership has dropped...
poor them, i bet they really miss you ;_;
Another fake sensationalist ad for a GM product??
Driving a car off a ferry and then not getting out of the floating car in 5 minutes sounds like planned suicide or extreme stupidity to me..
Bumix - Is it suicide or plain stupidity? Only diesel vehicles are usually permitted to run their engines on a ferry ride. That VW wasn't only on, but it was in gear (albeit the wrong one). So what other reasons could it be??
What's your point? I don't see why any car should be allowed to have it's engine running on a ferry. Also, what was the woman doing alone in the car working the controls while the rest of her family was outside?
wow, such bullshit
Update from today in the Shanghai Daily:
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2009/200902/20090205/article_389937.htm
I'm not an expert but if they were gonna let the car go down anyway, why in the world did they care if their rescuse boat MIGHT cause the car to go down faster???
Prix: I think everyone here has seen bad events happens in more than one country but the level to which people here DON'T offer to help is higher...I don't know why. Maybe someone can offer an explanation?
Bisa - In China every "incident" needs a fall guy. In the train accident in Qingdao, it was the engineer who took the fall, even though there were probably numerous people responsible for inadequate instruction/warning, faulty track, or faulty locomotive manufacture. Melamine - hundreds of people HAD to be involved but only 4 were sentenced.
So when something happens, like a car accident, when the police arrive they look for that one person that they can pin it on. Everybody knows this, so they stay the hell away so it isn't pinned on them. Its a "no help - no foul rule".
The most extreme case I have seen, not close to the horror of watching another die, but the EASE at which it would be able to help a bystander, is when I was walking with a local colleague of mine near People's Square around 8pm. I watched a sketchy Xinjiang kid try to lift from a guy's bag, and naturally I called his attention to it. I was told by my colleague that I was a "brave" man and that locals wouldn't do such a thing. Why was I brave? I thought it was being civil.
In their eyes, "if you don't say anything, you don't have the chance of being wrong". And in the most risk-adverse society on Earth, you are RIGHT for thinking so.
Hmm... I dare to say it may be cultural or even political.
In societies where taking on individual responsibility is viewed as being troublesome and risky - rather than brave and exemplary - I am tempted to think this kind of thing might happen more often.
In real existing socialism minding your own business used to be a prerequisite for survival.
The rescue boat crew should be severely punished for negligent, failing to render assistance where required.
They should all get kick in the ass. F**king cowards.
Similar thing happened to me....walking with my GF on Shanxi Lu around 19:00, talking, strolling. When all of a sudden I see a guy behind my GF in frog-like position walking her rhythm and hands almost all the way in her hand bag. I reacted grabbed the guy by the throat and pushed him against the wall, while shouting instructions at my GF to call the cops (I have to say I was just a year in China then, my western behavior had not adapted completely to the Chinese way of doing things).
She answers me screaming:" Let him go, let him go...they are going to kill you!". I swear I couldn't believe my ears, say what?...I have HIM by the throat he is not going anywhere....when out of the blue 2 women and a teen ager come to the young man’s rescue...kicking me, scratching me and shouting things I can't understand...I shout back in Spanish and tell them to FXXX off (Natural Reaction). In the end I had my GF pulling me away...and telling me...let him go...let him go! I did so because she looked really upset...and I have to be honest the kicking and scratching started to hurt. After a few seconds and making sure that the "Gang" went the other way and disappeared out of sight, I look around and see people laughing and pointing....smiling....I couldn't believe it...they just stood there watched it all happen and thought it was funny....People in China...not all of them off course...but a vast majority...would never lend a hand to help...I see people fall with their bicycles when it rains in the middle of the street and cars would deliberately drive close to them to make them move faster out of the way. Chinese people lost a great part of their human love, their morality, their god is money the rest is superstition.....it is sad...very sad...but then strange things happen like the quake in Si Chuan...so many volunteers everywhere....how come...why? It is a strange place we live in!
They usually come in groups, more often than not ethnic or religious or both minorities.
They become extremely aggressive when you catch them because anything is better for them than being in the hands of Han-Chinese police.
My thoughts on why volunteers everywhere in Sichuan and yet often incidents like the drowning lady occur in China is because a large-scale disaster is different. First of all, the government encourages people to rally together, unity, strength, for the love of the country, etc. So it is OK to help because the government says so. With an incident like the drowning, a car accident, a bicycle crash, someone tripping over in the street, a lost kid, etc.. helping would mean taking initiative - and as Pirx said, that is a cultural/political no no. While it would seem unacceptable and uncivilized to people from western cultures (and Japanese also) we must remember that it is only cultural conditioning.
My comment on why they were all standing around laughing, pointing, etc - Another shocking phenomenon for people from western cultures - The Chinese love to stand and watch, especially the poor and uneducated people (you wouldnt see a corporate manager or a factory boss standing on the street pointing he'd be sitting in a BMW or Mercedes somewhere on his way to a meeting or just plain being busy elsewhere). The laughing and pointing has always seemed to me as a kind of "haha look at that silly foreigner, he's not so smug now is he" kind of attitude. Don't forget, most of those people are either envious of you because you have a better life back home (as far as they know), or they hate you and your girlfriend because you are with a Chinese girl and you are a foreigner (so by default she is a traitor - sad but true).
Life isn't fair in China. Society is not pleasant and I dont think it will be for many generations to come. It is a lot easier to handle, however, when you let go of the expectations you have of a civilized society from back home.
Welcome to the zoo.