Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    FOR a while, Chinese society seems to have been gripped by negativity. The populace has been bombarded with disheartening news such as rampant official corruption, barbarous eviction and demolition, widespread food contamination and poisoning, fatal accidents, and worst of all, apathy.

    We are all under the impression that the breakneck economic leap has eroded the moral base of our society — the country is rotten to the core. A blog post by Han Han, a famous young author, seemed to have reinforced this delusion.

    In the post entitled “The Breeze From the Pacific Ocean,” he spoke of two of his experiences during his recent visit to Taiwan. One was the retrieval of his mobile phone from a taxi driver, who voluntarily sent him the lost phone, without knowing the owner was a “big name” on the mainland. The other was about a generous optical shop owner who offered a pair of contact lenses to one of Han Han’s friends, also from the mainland, so that the friend could see before his own glasses were fixed a couple of days later.

    In Han’s own words, he was “petrified” by such touching deeds. Han Han said: I would like to thank Hong Kong and Taiwan for preserving Chinese culture and other fine national characteristics, preventing a descent into havoc.

    It’s true that China has many maladies, even vices. It’s also true that both Hong Kong and Taiwan are in some ways better at maintaining China’s cultural heritage. Yet we must not ignore facts and distort the truth.

    As some responses to Han Han’s blog pointed out, what “petrified” Han Han is commonplace on the mainland China. The latest story was only a few days ago. On June 10, Li Dongying, a Shenzhen taxi driver, returned wads of foreign bank notes worth 5.3 million yuan (US$841,270) to the owner.

    If a well-informed and well-traveled person like Han Han has barely seen or heard of such common virtues in China, there must be something wrong with him or the people he encounters. It seems to me that media, particularly online media, have long been emphasizing the dark side of society, often exaggerating or fabricating facts.

    We often see and hear gloomy stories. Cyberspace is inundated with vituperation, hatred, fabrication and mudslinging. A well-known professor, who airs a few microblog posts on a daily basis, said some blather like this: This age, the most boring of all for the Chinese nation, will leave us nothing but ugliness. What an irresponsible and perverse person!

    Bias or misrepresentation cannot change the real world. The minute our candid reporters aim their cameras at the bright side of our society, we will be moved by good people and good deeds that can be found everywhere.

    Two ordinary people who behaved heroically moved the whole nation recently. Zhang Lili, a 29-year-old middle school teacher in Harbin, saved two of her students from a runaway bus, only to lose both of her legs. She was deemed the “Most Beautiful Teacher.” Wu Bin, a bus driver, while driving his bus on a highway, was struck and critically wounded by a flying metal fragment, but in great pain he managed to bring the bus to a steady halt and make sure all 24 passengers escaped unharmed. He died two days later.

    We must always have faith in humanity, virtue and love, even though the world is far from perfect. We must not make our children believe that the world is wicked by presenting them with a false picture. The fact is: virtues always prevail over vices.

(The author is an English tutor and a freelance writer.)