Around 3:20 pm on Sunday in Tangshan, Hebei province, a woman named Ms. Cheng was exercising in Nanhu Park when she saw some teenagers playing on a frozen lake. She and her exercise partner, Mr. Liu, were about 15 meters from the shore when the ice suddenly cracked, swallowing up the young revelers.

“I saw two guys and one girl playing on the ice, and suddenly the ice caved in,” said Ms. Cheng, as printed on the description of the Youku video below. “The first to fall in was the guy and girl, and then the other guy fell in too. All three of them were flapping about.”

Ms. Cheng and Mr. Liu immediately ran toward the three people and called 110.

“When other tourists saw us, they also ran toward us,” said Ms. Cheng.

Unable to wait for emergency personnel, Mr. Liu went into action, finding a wooden stick about two meters in length. He and others made their way onto the ice, extended the stick, and had the students grab on before pulling them to safety. The rescue took about 10 minutes.

“When the three were pulled out of the water, they couldn’t walk,” Ms. Cheng said. “I stopped a car to take them away.”

It’s understood that the students attend a high school in the city and have made full recoveries.

This is a refreshingly different sort of mainland-Chinese-tourist story.

Yesterday around 9 am, accoring to Apple Daily via Coconuts Hong Kong, a 47-year-old man called Shi Jian was fishing near  when he suffered a seizure and fell in the water.

A female tourist from the mainland happened to see this as she was passing by, and she quickly went over to help.

“I heard him shout ‘Help,’ so I walked over there and found he was already in the water,” said Long Xianming, 49.

Along with another fisherman, they formed a “human chain” to pull the man out of the water.

The woman suffered a few foot abrasions and was sent, along with the rescued man, to Princess Margaret Hospital, where they’ll both be okay.

(Image via Apple Daily screen capture)

Tommy Patton is the latest foreigner to win praise for assisting strangers in need. A former firefighter in the US, according to Xinmin, he helped keep two injured passengers conscious after their car was crushed between trucks on the G1501 Expressway in Shanghai on Tuesday afternoon.

Shanghai Daily reports:

Tommy Patton told Shanghai Daily yesterday that he was not a hero and only did what he could and should do.

“I saw them and helped them,” Patton said.

He left the scene of the accident after helping them out.

More details:

“I saw the foreigner squatting outside the car when I got stuck on the jammed expressway,”  said netizen “kisspengtai,” who claimed he was at the accident spot and uploaded a picture on  his Weibo blog.

Patton kept talking to the injured passengers in the car and tried to keep them conscious,” kisspengtai said.

Patton reportedly works in Taicang, Jiangsu province and plans to stay in China long-term.

Expat becomes unlikely hero for brave deed in highway accident (Shanghai Daily)

In Beijing’s Puhuangyu on Friday, a car ran someone over, and this is the aftermath. Look at all those people going to help.

No status yet on the man’s condition.

(Puhuangyu was where I was born, it so happens.)

This video’s three weeks old, but we just saw it thanks to Reddit, and isn’t it nice to see a person help someone else?

Just after the 30-second mark, a man behind camera says in Chinese, “You’re not afraid, you’re a foreign friend, you’re not afraid.” We assume he means afraid of getting sued, which, sadly, has happened here before. (Counterpoint: people also help others, quite often, actually.)

“You’re lying on gasoline right now, do you realize?” another Chinese bystander says in that scolding tone in which every word is sharply enunciated. The man continues to be drunk.

The foreigner (tourist, we’re guessing, judging by his lack of Chinese and the camera slung over a shoulder) insists on helping with the man’s motorized three-wheel bike. More and more people gather to watch. We hope the man arrived at his destination safely.

The tourist probably got a better story out of this than any he could have hoped for from the Drum and Bell Tower.

On the same day that saw a team take perhaps the most unsportsmanlike option possible in the face of defeat — the women’s rugby sevens team deciding to stop playing because they disagreed with a referee’s decision, and losing 71-0 — sportsmanship went ahead and redeemed itself with this story.

A Sichuan windsurfer named Ma Jiao, pictured above, reportedly risked her own life to save a fellow competitor from the Liaoning team, Hao Xiumei, on Tuesday at the 12th Chinese National Games.

Yesterday, Liaoning’s team sent a letter of appreciation, in which they expressed “sincerest gratitude” and paid “highest respects” to Team Sichuan, while also thanking Ma Jiao “for risking life and limb in the dauntless spirit of self-sacrifice.”

Good stuff. Here’s the letter in full:

(H/T SCMP)

In Shantou, Guangdong province, security cameras appeared to capture a kidnapping this morning while passersby watched on. Authorities are on the case and there are no further details at the moment — we don’t know, for instance, whether the woman forced into the white van (she’s pulled in by a man, who’s abetted by a woman wearing pink) knew her kidnappers — but it’s a startling scene. The Youku video description notes that people stood around and watched, but no one took action.

Hopefully someone off-camera at least called the cops, though it’s possible that the cynicism in this area runs so deep that people figured cops wouldn’t do anything. Again, just an unsettling scene all around. We’ve seen dogs get disappeared into these type of white vans before, but not people.

As a result of domestic strife, a 20-something woman in a residential compound in the Daoli district of Harbin, Heilongjiang province locked out her boyfriend, stepped onto the balcony of their 5th story apartment, and threatened to jump. She crawled out of the window and onto a wire clothesline, where she remained, distraught, according to a witness on the ground, as reported by Xinhua.

Neighbors and passersby called up to her and begged her not to jump, because she was young and had her whole life ahead of her. They said, “Think about your parents!” Her boyfriend went downstairs and knocked on his neighbor’s door, who let him in. Directly on the floor below her, he stuck his body out of the balcony window and tried to get her to calm down.

And then, the clothesline teetered, according to the eyewitness. She fell.

He caught her.

Several people helped hold the woman as she dangled in the air. According to witnesses, she pawed at her helpers, wanting to fall. Shortly after, firefighters arrived. They climbed to the third-story balcony and helped push her to safety.

There’s more to this story. The neighbor, Liang Shuang, played an integral part in the rescue. He grabbed the boyfriend’s belt and also reached out for the falling girl. His wife and daughter, home at the time, also helped.

It was serendipitous that they would all even be there to begin with. His parents, who had been visiting from Yichun, Heilongjiang, wanted to return home the day before, but Liang Shuang convinced them to stay an extra day.

A journalist dialed up Liang Shuang’s father, Liang Xibin, 51, who, when informed of what his son did, said, “That’s nothing. How can one not help someone in need? Can’t possibly just stand and watch. I think anyone in this situation would have reached out a hand and helped.”

For his efforts, netizens have dubbed Mr. Liang “China’s Good Neighbor.”

We’ve seen suicides caught on tape in Harbin before — leaping from a residential building, specifically, after a break-up. This rescue was a lot better.

(H/T Alicia)

The first time you watch this, you’ll likely not catch what exactly happens. Youku user Wanku, who posted the above video, certainly didn’t.

But after returning home and studying the footage, Wanku realized something: he/she saw a robbery happen in broad daylight, and in front of the city hall in Binhu district of Wuxi, Jiangsu province, no less.

Watch as the man in the black scooter approaches the woman from her blind side, reach out and grab something with his left hand, and speed off around the turn.

The woman is knocked off her bike and appears to slam her head against the ground. She never saw it coming.

Another woman on a scooter stops a few meters in front. The car that’s recording all this then begins to pull away, but it’s not to speed off. Wanku claims he/she got out of the car with the intent of helping the injured woman when he/she saw two passersby — a man and woman — who had already gone over and were calling for help.

It’s when Wanku got home that he/she saw the dastardly larceny. “If you require the original footage, you can get in touch,” Wanku writes.

We trust that the police have already done so.

An elderly man slipped and fell down some stairs and into a pond on July 24 around 8 am in Yibin, Sichuan province.

He was not left to his own devices as bystanders watched, too afraid to help. He did not drown, inciting widespread condemnation of society and its suppurating values.

He was rescued within 21 seconds.

Shanghaiist brings us the above video, which shows a 74-year-old man hurrying to the fallen elder’s aid and pulling him out of the water.

The hero of the day is He Changling, who matter-of-factly explains in the clip how the man in front of him fell, and how he pulled him out.

“He’s really taught all of us a lesson,” the news anchor concludes.

Doing good is nice, I think is that lesson.

China Navis has a GIF of the incident for you.

Old man tumbles into pond.

In Xuzhou, Jiangsu, a woman in the waiting hall of the high-speed rail station used one swift punch to take down a thief trying to escape his pursuers. He never saw it coming.

Good Samaritan laws, anyone? Here’s a story that — if you let it — might scare you away from helping those in need. Global Times:

A 28-year-old man who failed to save two teenaged girls from drowning in a lake has paid 50,000 yuan ($8,150) in compensation to their families, Chengdu Business Daily reported Tuesday.

The victims, aged 17 and 18, were hanging out with their friend, the man, Wu Bo, at the lake on Sunday, when they fell into the water.

Wu, who was already swimming in the lake, tried to save them, but when they got “too heavy” he let go, afraid that he would also drown. He cried for help, but by the time others came to pull them out, the girls were already dead.

The incident happened on July 7 in Dazhou, Sichuan province, according to Henan Business Daily. Wu Bo, probably to his credit, sat down with journalists the day after to express his “profound regret.” He said he had met the girls — Li Qing and Liu Chen — only a few days earlier at a restaurant. Li Qing apparently phoned Wu Bo and invited him to hang out on the fateful Sunday at Lotus Lake.

“I hate myself for not having the strength to save them,” Wu said. “I truly can’t make it up to them.”

It does not seem like the man was coerced into compensating the family — though they did hold “negotiations” — and he certainly wasn’t held legally accountable. Still, the case has renewed online debate about a Good Samaritan law, since we’ve seen more egregious cases before of do-gooders being punished. Equally disturbing are the cases where people do nothing to help those in obvious need for fear of repercussions.

Anyway, to be fair: there are plenty of good people out there, as we do see time and again. There’s hope yet for us all.

– Hey, everyone, look! A grandmother is trapped underneath that bus!

– Ooooooh.

– Say qiezi!

– Qieeeeeee-zi!

– Great. Now get one of me!

– Woman under bus, barely audibly: Hellllp. Me.

– Qieeeeeeeeeeee-zi!

~

Sinopathic has this story, which took place in Xi’an, Shaanxi province:

Here’s a statement released by the Beilin district traffic officer responding to the scene, Li Zhan:

“At the time of the incident, an elderly woman aged approximately 60 years of age was crossing the street with her grandchild when she was run over by the #26 public transit bus and became trapped underneath as a result. Due to the fact that the flow of vehicular and pedestrian traffic here at the Nanshaomen intersection is heavy, many passing pedestrians stopped in their tracks to witness the accident; there were even some people who took out their cell phones to repeatedly take pictures. However, no one called 120 (the police emergency services hotline). I immediately went to assess the situation of the victim and then called 120 myself. I then kept in contact with the victim and had her stay calm. [For her part,] the old woman repeatedly urged me to look after her grandson.”

The victim was taken to an air force hospital; there was no further word to her condition.

Grandmother Trapped Under Bus, Bystanders Busy Taking Pictures to Explain Why No One is Helping Her (Sinopathic)

A two-and-a-half-year-old girl is lucky to be alive after she fell from the fourth story of a building in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

The toddler, identified as Qiqi, climbed on the window sill and — sigh if you’ve heard this before — crawled right on out. Her parents had left her home alone as she was sleeping, because toddlers never wake up when they’re home alone or anything.

Ah, but I don’t mean to bury the good part: a group of deliverymen, passing underneath, saw the girl dangling, and managed to catch her as she fell. (We’ve seen this before, wonderfully.) Two men appeared to sustain injuries, but the girl is okay. She’ll have one heck of a story to tell later.

The deliverymen, we hope, get all the credit they deserve.

This is nice. In China — undisclosed city, undisclosed time — a driver saw an elderly woman walking slowly on the side of the street, and a water truck coming toward her from the other side. The sprayage would almost assuredly have soaked her, so the driver sped up, then parked the car between the oncoming truck and the woman. It’s the road equivalent of laying a raincoat over a puddle so that a woman in heels can cross the road.

Well done, whoever did this. Again, there’s not much information, but we’d prefer to think that what we see here is exactly what happened: a dashboard cam, for once, catching someone in an act of decency, instead of this.