Sunday, May 5, 2019

The Guy Should Have Helped You





My little one and I rode over to dinner last night on our bikes.  She arrived a few minutes after me and sat down quietly.  Then she shared that she’d had an accident, where she bumped into a pedestrian and fell, scraping herself.   She wechatted me a photo of her leg she snapped under the table and it was a bloody scrape.  It must have hurt but I could tell she was more shook up then in pain.  I had to entertain my son’s in-laws and didn’t disrupt things but tried to make sure she was alright. 



She said the person, who was a foreigner, and not a Chinese, didn’t say anything, didn’t appear to be hurt and rather, didn’t offer to help her and just walked away.  I felt angry, of course, and also knew that I had imperfect information.  I felt obliged to explain to her that sometimes, the law is opaque in China and people, Chinese and foreign, had just as soon, not have anything to do with even a whiff of trouble.  And as a result they adopt a counter-intuitive sense of avoidance.  “The guy should have helped you and asked if you were alright.”

We didn’t have any mega band aids at home, so I told her to wash it with soap and let it breath during the evening.  She did that again this morning and when I dropped her at school she promised to go see the nurse to have a quick look.  I suppose I still feel bad that I biked ahead that night and didn’t watch her go first.  She is fifteen and I cannot, of course, watch over all her bike rides any longer.



No international internet this morning.  I was tired and grumpy as it was and this didn’t help.  Usually if you switch Astrill from landing in one server to another or another somewhere in the U.S. it works well enough.  If that fails try Germany, or Russia or Albania.  Nothing worked this morning.  Nor did my cellular Wi-Fi.  I could still read the Washington Post, just not the Times.  I could still translate a Chinese article and read it.  Just had to use mdbg.net and not Google Translate.  I could still see my emails on my phone.  Nothing pressing had yet to show.



Monday, 5/06/19

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