Liu Shinan

How can people be so cruel?

By Liu Shinan (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-05-23 07:05

A 16-year-old girl killed herself last Friday in Shenyang after being humiliated by the manager of a grocery, where she stole a piece of bread out of hunger.

The last words she left in a letter to her family read: "I didn't mean to steal that piece of bread that did not belong to me. I knew I was wrong but I was really very hungry. I failed to withstand the temptation and did a thing I should not have done. I have no courage to face you anymore and have no courage to go to school any more. I'm leaving, forever. Hope you will pardon me."

Since my childhood, I have been trying not to weep over the sad stories I hear because I thought it a shame for a man to cry. But the girl's words made me weep and I did not try to keep back the tears.

The bread that led to the girl's death cost only 2 yuan (26 cents), less than half of a meager lunch box, or one 20th of the cost of a meal at any roadside cafe, or one 50th of the price of a small cup of shark's fin soup at an average restaurant in Beijing orShanghai.

I know such comparison may not always be meaningful because I understand that the wealth gap between rich and poor is normal in any country or society. But I still can't help cursing whoever, or whatever, was responsible for the death of the poor girl.

The manager of the grocery may not be culpable. She did not physically harm the girl, according to media coverage, which did not directly quote any abusive words by the manager. But she forced the girl to stand still listening to her lecturing and wouldn't allow the girl to leave even after some passers-by offered to pay for the girl. She also threatened to inform the girl's school despite the girl's repeated apologies.

Responsibility aside, the store manager is blamable because of her detention - ill-intended or not - of the girl, scolding her harshly. Threatening to report to the girl's school at least triggered the reputation-sensitive girl's suicide.

The grocery manager didn't seem to be a villain but the ruthlessness she demonstrated toward the hungry and timid girl is outrageous. Of course the manager could not foresee that the girl would commit suicide. But was it really necessary for her to act that way?

Anyone who sees a starving teenager in shabby clothing begging with tears in her eyes would feel compassion. How could the manager (probably she also has a child) be so hard-hearted?

In this time of ours where selfish pursuit of material benefits is no longer shameful, quite a few members of our society have discarded their natural compassion. They wouldn't flinch from sacrificing others' interests for their own benefit of even one yuan.

I am not overstating the situation for sensational effect. Examples abound. Yesterday, I read on an Internet media outlet that a mine owner in Shanxi Province held two young girls in captivity as sex slaves to lure miners to labor for him at low pay.

And there have been other cases similar to the girl pilfering bread. In 2004, a woman killed herself after being fired by a plant in Beijing because she was found to have hidden a product with defects - a balloon she accidentally pricked and broke.

It was raining heavily when she was kicked out of the plant penniless. The plant refused to pay her the two months' wages she was entitled to.

The young woman said in the last letter to her parents: "Dad and Mum,it is raining, I feel cold and hungry. I have no money. ... I choose pesticide rather than a knife. Pesticide may cause less pain."

I have dozens of reports of similar cases.

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(China Daily 05/23/2007 page10)