Ever had the desire to stand around and watch people lying on the pavement bleeding out, but not have to do anything about it?

If you said yes, you are a heartless jerk.

But, you would not be alone. Because if I polled the people in Yangshuo (and all of China from what I hear) then about 99.9% of people would have said yes to the above question.

I was witness to my second accident since in the past 2 months.

First accident was no biggie - A lady was walking across the road not looking for traffic at all (nobody does) when a lady riding a scooter (who was NOT looking forward, but behind herself as they always do) smacked into her.

WHAP!

Scooter - 1
Lady lying face down on the pavement - 0

Everybody just stood and looked at the lady lying on the ground. An Australian guy and I ran over and went to work. All the usual post- accident stuff that you do - and everybody just stood and watched. She was ok eventually. They took her to the hospital and did whatever they do


Second accident, not so kind. 2 days ago I was waiting for someone near a small river when I heard the "smack-griiiiind" of large machinery sliding on asphalt. I saw a large crowd of people who were...

(can you guess what they were doing?)

...Standing there watching. Two women face down in a large pool of blood. I was the ONLY one who went to help. C'mon people!?! One had a pretty bad head injury. So I attended to them both by myself with a crowd of 50 just watching.

Great.
Fantastic.
Wonderful. I'm elbow deep in blood and you're just watching.

Thanks for your help everyone.

I went to the hospital later in the day to check on them. The one with the bad head injury was still in rough condition... the other was ok.

Moral of the story here? Don't get hit by a large moving piece of metal in China unless you have a back-up plan after death.