The Kindred Spirits - Another afterthought on the Sichuan Quake

I'm sure you guys won't need me to know that China is seriously in trouble at Sichuan. What I'm more focused on now is the aid that's so, so forthcoming.

Recently, there was a televised donation gathering show in Singapore meant for the quake victims. Guess what? It became the top donation-gathering show in the history of Singapore's televised donation shows. Originally thought to be a jaded way of gathering donations, it quickly became an effort surpassing SGD10 million, wow! Totally unbelievable.

Talking about myself for once (breaking my own rules), I was somehow "forced" to donate for the Sichuan quake victims while purchasing some "lifelines" at a petrol kiosk recently (because someone from the back of my queue just went up and placed coins into the tin can that says "Sichuan Quake Victims' Fund", but oddly, I felt happy to be "forced" to donate. Usually I would just treat them as annoyances and deliberately ignore the tin cans altogether.

This then leads me to note an interesting story in China itself. A beggar in China's urban area, and a shoe polish woman, not very interesting characters to say the least since they're dime a dozen in China. What sets them apart from their peers is their selflessness (let's just assume they're not there for the media hype, I doubt they even knew!). The beggar takes almost all his alms and then donates it into a community fund box thing, saying that he was just "doing his part". As a Chinese? As a fellow human being? As a compassionate kindred spirit? Whatever it was, it sure meant a lot to the victims at Sichuan. The same goes for the shoe polish woman, whose claim to fame was to queue in a bee-line for 30 minutes to put in about close to 200 yuan (around SGD40) before going back to work. Random anonymous worker there noted that the same woman ran up and down the bee-line at least ten times. That's... like 2000 yuan, not as substantial as the amount put in by Zhang Ziyi (around 2 million+ USD... or yuan?) and Yao Ming (who had to be "coerced" by Chinese netizens slamming him for donating too little, so his donation amounts, now, roughly to the same as Zhang Ziyi's) but nevertheless a spirited effort.

Like, wow. Random Chinese-on-the-streets-so-far-away donates whatever they can in spite of their own hardship. For those of you out there who still thinks that the Ah Tiongs should be left for dead (like Sharon Stone) you better f***ing "wake up your idea".

It's not a time for all that stupid debate between US and China that has gone on for so long. Indeed, all the meaningless debate wouldn't stop if *this* hadn't happened. Let's just hope the world can be a lot more happier from now.

Let's just hold out for hope.