Finding solutions

"It is sad that senior people have to plead for help in this way," said Zhang Sheng, a law professor at Beijing Jiaotong University. "Traditionally in China, taking care of seniors is important, but now people are at a loss when it comes to knowing the right way to help."

According to a survey made by China Youth Daily in December 2013, among the 139,010 respondents, faced with an old person who had fallen over and needed assistance, 55.6 percent would choose to walk away, 23.4 percent said that they would keep a record or themselves a witness before offering help, 12.6 percent would call ambulance and wait, but only 5.4 percent said that they would help without any hesitation.

Zhang, however, doesn't regard this as a loss of tradition. "I don't think people are turning cold-hearted," he said. "We just need to build up a system that secures the interests of both helpers and the helped."

"I believe many people are warm-hearted," said a 67-year-old Beijinger surnamed Xie, who claimed to go for a walk everyday on the street. "Nobody knows what time an accident will occur at. We are nervous as many old people have high blood pressure or heart diseases. We need help for medical emergencies."

Zhou Xiang, a 26-year-old man from Shanxi Province who works in Beijing, said that he would offer help anyway. "I live far away from my parents. If my parents fall down on the street, I'd hope strangers could offer help," Zhou noted. "So I would do the same thing to senior people here."

Zhou admitted there are people fabricating false cases of injury to extort money, but he said that this trend doesn't only exist among seniors. "It is a problem with the whole of society and it is unfair to target only old people with these suspicions," he added.

On December 2, 2013, a video clip spread online that shows an argument happened on a Beijing street between a Chinese woman who had fallen from her bicycle and a young foreign man. It was initially reported that the woman had intentionally thrown herself in front of the foreigner's motorbike to extort money from him.

"Although it was finally proven that the foreigner had knocked over the woman, the fact that most people believed it was the woman's fault reflects the distrust of such people," said Hou Xinyi, a law professor at Tianjin-based Nankai University. "Real victims might be wronged by social distrust."

In early December 2013, an anonymous man in Luoyang, Henan, who claimed to be 65 years old, made a post online. "Even if someone knocks me down to the ground, it may not be intentional. I will thank those who help me up," said the post. This man even made a will online, demanding his children not to seek compensation from anybody if an accident occurs.

The man's declaration won widespread acclaim online, but Hou thought there is a better way to deal with such issues. "I think we need to set up an integrity credit system to curb extortions instead of relying on individual's efforts in bettering the situation," he said.

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