How a two-year-old changed China

The depth of our brokenness never fails to amaze me. We kill, steal, cheat, and destroy. We plunder our own humanity in the name of wealth, power, and comfort. And then we mine the depths looking for an even deeper abyss, as if we haven't gone deep enough. 

Such thoughts are on the hearts, minds, and lips of the Chinese nation as they collectively struggle to make sense of what has to be, in their minds, the most poignant and utterly disturbing example of just how cold their society has apparently become.

I'm talking, of course, about the tragic story of Wang Yue. In case you're in the dark about this heart-wrenching story, Wang Yue is the two-year-old whose untimely death became the center of a national crisis of conscience, morality, and humanity. Just over two weeks ago, Wang Yue's sad fate forever changed the nation of China when she was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver in her hometown of Foshan, Guangdong Province. Unable to move from the road herself and her parents unaware of the situation, the small child was injured a second time by another hit-and-run driver. But it wasn't even the second hit-and-run driver's actions that spurred the greatest cry from Chinese citizens--it was the 18 passers-by who neglected to help her--and callously so, it seems--as she approached death. Only when an elderly garbage-picking woman (a position placed among the lower rungs of Chinese society) carried the girl to a safe place and called emergency help did the girl receive any aid. Wang Yue succumbed to her injuries in the hospital a week later. (The entire incident was caught on video, which you can access here. I can't even bring myself to watch it. It's just something I will never be able to digest.) 

At this point, one is tempted to make a myriad of generalized accusations and assumptions about Chinese culture and society. Every country has its share of problems, and like any such case, we must avoid figer-pointing and ask ourselves the deeper question: what kind of cultural and societal norms can allow for such an incident? Certainly, the Chinese are asking. I would be remiss if I didn't make it abundantly clear to you that the Chinese people are the most torn, disgusted, and demoralized of anyone by this incident. Millions and millions of Chinese have voiced their angst and disillusionment through the internet. And if what I read online from Chinese netizens isn't concrete enough, my students' faces convey what words cannot: broken, shattered hearts from a society that they see heading further into the depths while they feel completely powerless to stop it. 

And so an entire country has begun some serious soul-searching. As egregious as the Wang Yue case is, the more troubling reality is that it is only the latest in a series of national incidents where a devastating lack of Good Samaritans has indicated a troubling trend. While this and other such stories are horrific and uncommon in their scale, the underlying problems are not limited to these rare cases. The pervasive sense among Chinese that the country severely lacks Good Samaritans is an endemic crisis that certainly every person in China, including myself and the other expats I know, has encountered personally on at least one occasion but usually more. 

As outsiders to Chinese society and culture, our lack of understanding can easily lead us to several conclusions, the least of which is to inaccurately conclude that China is a land bereft of any human decency. I can personally attest that this is far from the truth. However, there is a distressing abundance of indifference for one's fellow man, and it is this issue that I hope to address in future posts. 

In my time in China, I have poured countless hours into the understanding of this particular issue--the apparent lack of Good Samaritans and the troubling abundance of indifferent bystanders--and in light of the Wang Yue story I can think of no better time than now to share with you the fascinating insights I've gleaned from hours and hours of reading books, blogs, articles, and talking to my Chinese friends and students. 

So my purpose in this post is two-fold, I suppose: to share with you this tragic case and the Chinese response to it, and to inform you that I want to spend a significant chunk of time writing about this topic so that you can better understand the complex climate that can produce such things as this. So stay tuned. I do have a few other quick posts I want to get out of the way first, but then I plan to dive head-first into this and pump out several posts on the topic in hopes that you can avoid simply writing-off China as a gaping hole that floods the world's attempts at staying morally afloat.