In Tongxiang county, Jiaxing, Zhejiang province recently, a five-year-old boy named Yan Zhe was killed when he wandered in front of a parked bus whose driver did not see him before accelerating. In the video, you see the driver leave his vehicle, realize what he’s done, and then… nothing.

The hysterical mother rushes in and collapses when she discovers what’s happened. The bus driver turns his body from her. She pleads for help — from everyone, anyone – but no one steps forward. She rushes toward a car, but that vehicle backs away, slowly, metaphorical hands in the air as to say, “Not my problem.”

Finally, someone does transport Yan Zhe to the hospital, where he will be pronounced dead.

Chinese media, on cue, have compared this incident to another last year from Foshan, Guangdong province, the infamous, national-conscience-rattling case of Yue Yue, who lay dying on the side of a road while 18 people walked or cycled past. The news anchor in the above asks whether we’ve forgotten her legacy. “Now, can we still see those inner scars? Can we remember the pain and anguish from that time? Granted, it was an unavoidable accident, but that doesn’t make it an acceptable excuse for those who backed away. Child’s parents are responsible, driver is responsible, everyone who witnessed it is responsible.”

Last month, people whispered “Yue Yue” as well when a woman on the highway got run over multiple times by cars that wouldn’t slow down. Are we destined for a continual string of these type of stories? Will “Yue Yue” become empty words, if they’re not already?

And to think, just earlier today we saw two stories of Samaritans at work: in one, a Swedish man dove into cold waters to save a drowning woman; in another, this dog. In both, notice how many people just stand around as if watching a spectacle, while someone’s life is in danger. It’s clear the lessons of the past have yet to be internalized by the public at large.

Early Monday morning in Hengyang, Hunan province, a woman was knocked down in the middle of the road. After calling the police, some helpful passersby shone lights around the area as a warning to passing vehicles. Shockingly, however, not only did cars not slow down, but some proceeded to run right over the wounded woman, ensuring her death.

“Yue Yue tragedy repeats itself” is the name of the 56.com video that appears after the jump. Indeed, the Yue Yue tragedy has been dredged to the top as people grapple with the reality of a country’s collective moral deficiency and wonder how we’ve created a system that can expose even the most helpless among us to further neglect and harm. Yes, this is a metaphor, and at the risk of “endangering” the upcoming 18th National Congress — God forbid any of us ruffle the perfectly laid plans of the country’s most powerful — it’s something we should talk about.

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In the interest of fairness, of course, we’ll point out that this case isn’t nearly as black-and-white an example of delinquency. This happened at nighttime, on a highway, and the woman, it must be said, should not have been crossing the road. In addition, China’s tort laws are such that helping the woman could also make one culpable — that would explain why someone is filming, something we’ve seen before.

Nonetheless, people are bringing up Yue Yue, the ultimate example of how individual indifference, compounded, can damn an entire society.

On October 13, 2011, a minibus collided into 2-year-old Wang Yue in Guangzhou. Eighteen people would proceed to pass the dying girl without helping. The case made national headlines, and provoked mass soul-searching and outrage.

Will this latest incident similarly serve as a national awakening? It seems unlikely. But even if pangs of conscience make some of us consider what it means to be a decent person with basic, unspoken responsibilities to our fellow man and woman, how long before we doze off once again? In an ever-changing, crowded, competitive place as this, a cauldron of good, bad, and neutral elements where only the aggressive seem to rise, it can be easy to forget that we are not alone in this struggle. It can be easy — necessary, some might think — to erect barriers between ourselves and empathy.

This isn’t an excuse for ethically questionable behavior, but a reminder of the difficulties and challenges at every turn on our dark, fast highway. It’s an important reminder, at a terrible cost.

Act IV: In Which The Driver Is Sentenced To Three And A Half Years In Jail

On Wednesday, the Nanhai District People’s Court in Foshan, Guangdong province convicted Hu Jun of involuntary homicide and sentenced him to three and a half years in jail. According to Xinhua, “The court said it also issued a lenient sentence because Hu gave himself up to police and paid part of the victim’s medical expenses.”

According to Xinhua, he pled guilty to traffic crimes but not homicide. His trial began on May 25.

Act III: In Which An Elderly Scrap Peddler Is Rewarded

Chen Xianmei, 57, would have been the 19th person to walk by the fallen girl in the hardware market. She sets down her scavenged wares, stands over the child, and looks around. Then she carefully moves Yue Yue’s body to the side of the road and calls for help.

Chen is given 10,000 yuan by each of two governmental offices. She is given 50,000 yuan by the owner of an IT company. She is given 5,000 yuan by a Party member. Yue Yue’s family kowtows to her. And then she is accused by the public of seeking fame.

“A lot of people are now saying that I’m doing it to get famous, and to get money. Even my neighbours are now saying so!” she tells Nanfang Daily, as translated by Shanghaiist. “That really wasn’t my intention, and I’m so afraid of hearing what people are saying that I don’t dare to watch the news. I’m not out for fame or money.”

Act II: In Which A Nation Expresses Shock, Anger

Over the course of seven minutes, 18 people walk or cycle by the bleeding girl and do nothing.

“(I swear to the God) If I had seen the girl, I would die in your face,” says one.

“I wanted to lift her, but there was so much blood. I was scared,” a woman surnamed Lin says. She claims to feel “regretful, compassionate, painful at heart and guilty.”

People blame education. They blame the “immoral modern society.” They blame the driver, of course, and the 18. “We should look into the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the soul-searching bullet,” says a government official at a provincial meeting.

People blame the “Nanjing judge,” meaning the Peng Yu case.

Xinhua reports:

According to reports the van driver had just split up from his girlfriend and was talking on his mobile phone when he hit the girl.

“If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan,” said the driver over the phone to the media, before he gave himself up to the police.

“We are all passersby,” comments one netizen, then two, then countless more, until the message sits like a rock in our collective gut like guilt.

Act I: In Which A Two-Year-Old Child Is Run Over Twice And, Dying On the Street, Is Ignored By Eighteen Passersby

On October 13, 2011, Hu Jun’s minibus collides into two-year-old Wang Yue. With her body underneath the van’s back wheel, Hu drives forward. He won’t be heard from until 10 days later, when he turns himself in around the time that the driver of a second vehicle that runs over Yue Yue is arrested.

The mother, who had gone to pick up laundry, rushes to pick up her prone daughter, who will be transferred to the General Hospital of the Guangzhou Military Command of the People’s Liberation Army in Guangzhou later that day and eventually given a best-case prognosis of permanent vegetative state. Yue Yue will be dead within eight days. The tears will come later, as will the revelations that shake a nation to its soul. But for now there is just a mother and her child, and moments between them that have yet to happen.