20% of Hongkongers.
It's even worse in China. If the parents can't swim who's gonna teach the kids?
How many schools/communities even have a pool in China? Especially in rural areas?
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20% of Hongkongers.
It's even worse in China. If the parents can't swim who's gonna teach the kids?
How many schools/communities even have a pool in China? Especially in rural areas?
solarz
Brigadier
I think you're being too harsh here. If you look at the video, it was 30 seconds from the time the girl fell into the water to the time the elderly gentleman jumped into the river. That's not a lot of time for people to react. The woman filming the incident called out for help. Around the 45 second mark, someone tosses a buoy into the river. All the bystanders would barely have had time to register what was going on before the whole thing was over.
The only thing I would say is that the girl was lucky the elderly gentleman was on site and had the presence of mind to act quickly.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
So give me a number on how many Chinese people can swim, and count the number of people in that video and tell me mathematically that it's likely that they all can't swim, cus I don't see it. Every person in my family male and female can swim and we all came from China. My grandfather grew up on a farm in China and those boys compete swimming in the lake. He trained my father so well that when a young lady dropped her jade bracelet into a deep well, he confidently ordered my father to dive to the bottom and retrieve it, which he did. For 30 people to not be able to swim, the swim literacy rate needs to be like 3%.
This by no means gets past the shame of being a male in your prime who can't survive water deeper than your nose.
Find a teacher, go on the internet, do whatever it takes. If you have lake to drown in, you have a lake to learn to swim in. The only real thing stopping them is the parents being negligent and thinking that's it's ok.
30 seconds works the same for everyone. Why was an old Brit faster than 30 young Chinese??
From what I've seen personally, Chinese that grew up with dams/lakes/rivers nearby are more likely to know how to swim. Is this the case with your family?
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
No. My father took me to public pools and paid each time to teach me to swim from a young age. If he was busy, my grandfather would teach that day. They set 3 tiers of goals per lesson for movement and breath control and for each tier I completed, I got an upgrade to my dinner that night! Nothing was convenient or cheap but my father and grandfather pulled out all the stops to teach me. Even my uncles did this for their daughters. In my family, we say that all men must swim and we must know how to swim while saving someone if they are drowning.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Just do a simple search and you can find all sorts of examples of awful behaviour in western countries. Doesn’t prove anything.
Teens mock and laugh at drowning man and record him instead of helping
First responders did nothing for over an hour while a person drowned
Police chase person into water and watched as he drowned
That’s from a 2 minute search.
I turn up just as many videos of Chinese people jumping in and saving people as well.
The only thing such one-off clips prove is racist intend in the western MSM making a mountain out of a mole hole.
Teens mock and laugh at drowning man and record him instead of helping
First responders did nothing for over an hour while a person drowned
Police chase person into water and watched as he drowned
That’s from a 2 minute search.
I turn up just as many videos of Chinese people jumping in and saving people as well.
The only thing such one-off clips prove is racist intend in the western MSM making a mountain out of a mole hole.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
I don't think so. The triathlete Stephen Ellison was born in 1968. This diplomat is 61 years of age according to the article, placing his birth year at 1959 give or take.
@plawolf Of course it doesn't prove anything. If I thought that this proved what Chinese people and British people are made of, then I'd shut up because there's nothing to be angry about anymore if this is the best that we can do. I'm angry that instead of showing courage, these Chinese people allowed this incident to unfold in such a way that Western MSM can use it as propaganda.
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solarz
Brigadier
It wasn't 30 young people. Watch the video more carefully. The girl slips and falls. The lady filming the video calls out for help immediately. People start yelling. The camera angles down at this point, but you can still see that only 2-3 people standing on the bridge could see exactly what was going on. Right after that, the girl passes under the bridge, so a lot of people wouldn't even know what was going on. Then the elderly man takes off his shoes and jumps into the river at exactly the 36 second mark. Less than 10 seconds later, someone tosses in a buoy.
The bystanders only gathered after the man jumped in, at which point everything looked to be under control and there was no point in doing anything else.
Like I said, kudos for the elderly British gentleman for having the presence of mind and the courage to save the drowning girl, but you're being too harsh. People react differently to sudden events, some people just freeze up. The British gentleman who jumped in was a triathlete, very likely he also had some experience as a life guard or had some training, or simply had more presence of mind due to his athletic background. Whatever the reason, he was there, he acted quickly, and the girl was saved. There's no reason to be apportioning blame here.
I remember very clearly one incident when I was young. I was at a park in Shanghai with my parents, we were walking near a lake. Someone yelled out a kid had fallen in. My dad goes to see what's going on, and by then the kid had already climbed back on shore and was wringing dry his clothes. It's just one of those situations that happen very fast, and if you're not on top of it from the start, it will be over before you realize what happened.