I’ve heard multiple stories about people in China standing around watching a fight rather than helping the people involved. Why is that? I think a big reason for that is all the stories we also hear about people who try to help and then the person that they are trying to help accuses them of hurting them in the first place and then trying to get money out of them. Sadly, there have been stories of people who trick others in this way.
But today, I saw a group of random strangers rally around a man who was hurt.
It’s been raining lately, so I was walking back to campus from the metro instead of riding my bike. I was looking down when I heard a crash and looked up. Next to a stop light, a bike lay in pieces next to a railing that divided the road from the bike lane. At first, I didn’t see the man next to the bike, and I’m still not sure what happened. My best guess is that the man hit the guard rail, but the seat of the bike was further down the road, so I’m not sure exactly how that happened.
My first thought was to call for help, but there were two other people on the sidewalk with me, and they got out their phones to call. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I had seen the man by this point, he lay for a few minutes then he sat up, spitting blood.
After a few moments, I went over to him and asked if he could move to the sidewalk. He was on the edge of the road, but there were still cars going around him, and it didn’t seem very safe. I asked him where he was hurt.
While I was trying to figure out how to help him, another lady stopped on her bike and asked if we had called for help. I pointed to the two people who said they were calling and said they were.
A moment later, several other people had come over to check on the man. One of my previous students also ran up to me.
“Alison, what happened?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I replied, still trying to process everything that was happening.
The call for help finally went through, and someone handed a phone to the man who was hurt. By now he had stood up and said that he didn’t need an ambulance. He pushed the phone away.
“Are you sure?” Someone asked. “You’ve been spitting out so much blood.” He showed us a wound on his mouth where he had knocked into something. I’m not sure if he had lost a tooth, but I was glad that it was a mouth injury and not something internal.
A group of men picked up the larger pieces of the bike and carried it to the sidewalk. The man’s belongings were also strewn around the road a bit and the men stopped the cars and picked up the other belongings and pieces of the bike.
“Thanks for stopping,” I said to my student as he said that he needed to leave to go to his part-time job.
“Let me call you a taxi,” I heard someone say to the man as I walked away.
I’m still not quite sure what happened to cause the accident, but watching all of these people gather around to help this stranger was a beautiful thing. Nobody did anything particularly heroic, but taking time to stop and call for help or carry a bike or offer to call a taxi showed me how important it is to care for those around us. I don’t ever want to be too busy that I don’t have time to help out in a small way or a big way if I see someone around me suffering.
And I’m glad that these people were willing to help this injured man rather than turning the other way for fear that he was tricking them. A bit of compassion can go a long way, and I hope that man could feel our care and concern as we stopped to try to help him.