How kind should one be?

‘Xiao Du cried her heart out after I scolded her the other night at this very restaurant,’ my friend said, with frustration in her voice.

‘What had she done to deserve that?’ I asked. A pious Christian, my friend is anything but unforgiving. She has been mentoring Xiao Du ever since they met.

‘She was smart enough to get a master’s degree from Glasgow University without any difficulty. Yet she is naïve enough to hand over her mobile to a total stranger in the street!’

‘How come?’ It sounded pretty incredible.

‘She was on a trip to Nanhai city one morning and, as usual, arrived in good time. As she was walking to her destination, a car door was flung open right in front of her and a few stout men got out to ask for her help. They claimed to have come from a north eastern city and had lost their mobiles the night before. They wanted to borrow her mobile to contact their office.’

The ‘sensible’ way to protect oneself would have been to walk quickly away, pretending to be deaf or minding one’s own business.

‘What enraged me was that she not only gave them her mobile but got into their car to assist them! How foolish she was! She could have been stripped naked and held for ransom! Furthermore, in exchange for a promise to return her mobile later that evening, she walked away with a deposit from the strangers and attended to her business.’

‘Did she get her mobile back?’

‘Of course not! Both her family and I got calls from someone using it and asking how he could contact her. Imagine what was on our minds! We thought it was a scam and that her mobile had been snatched from her pocket. We feared she had been kidnapped.’

‘Didn’t she get in touch with her family?’

‘She did, but only to say “there’s been an incident” which she could not explain until she returned home. She didn’t have a clue that this would only add to our worries.’

‘Was she hurt or anything?’

‘No, but the point is, with so many scams and kidnaps happening every day, she should not have been so naïve as to trust total strangers. She’s had a lucky escape this time because those men turned out to be respectable, but that won’t always be the case. She shouldn’t forget that she’s back in China, you know.’