No Country For Old Men was this year’s winner at the academy awards, telling the story of an aged cop in a Texas that is getting more and more violent and out of control. Of course, it showed again the mistakes of normal people and how these mistakes can cost them their lives, as featured before in Fargo. The Coens really like to show us how stupid we are sometimes.

If I had to make a movie similar to No Country For Old Men in Shanghai, I would change the title to No Country For Weak Men. What happened yesterday explains this:

After shopping around a bit on Huahai road with beautiful sunshine and a nice dinner at a low-budget italian restaurant keychain, my wife and I headed home to Pudong by subway in the evening. We had just changed to line 2 at people square and were in a pretty empty wagon, when a guy all of a sudden lost his consciousness and fell down on the ground, hitting his head on my wife’s back during that fall. What happened then really made me sad and angry.

Nobody, nobody at all moved or did anything. Everyone sat or stand around, of course looking staring at that poor guy, but doing nothing. We went on our knees and tried to wake that guy, shaking him a bit and talking to him. He didn’t react at all. Finally, finally one person got down to the ground with us and helped us to put that dude back on his feet, trying to bring him back.

Then things got stranger - the guy, obviously overtired or sick or whatever, was unable to stand. He wouldn’t have fallen down on the ground if he was okay, right? So you would expect that somebody would get up and give his damn seat to him so that he could get better. Nobody, nobody stood up.

At least not for half a minute, which is is quite a long time, considered you are trying to keep a 60 kilograms heavy person on his feet. Finally, finally a young woman stood up and told us to put him in his seat. Everyone in the wagon was watching that guy and us lifting him, and nobody gave their seat to us, except a woman. There were like 5 guys in their 20’s sitting around on their seats staring at the event. So, so sad.

I’ve experienced a fair amount of bullshit in and around Shanghai in the last years, but never ever had I experienced something this bitter before.