老外地铁逃票被罚

LW: A woman was fined for jumping the turnstile at the Shanghai metro. Brian, what exactly is this story here? What’s going on? BK: Well, as everybody probably or at least should know, you go on the subway you have to swipe in and then swipe out or whatever, you have to pay. [LW: Seems reasonable] right, right, and this woman tried to not do that. She tried to duck under the little gates on the exit, and she got caught. She said that she was – she had lost her ticket, but like any – like everybody, you get caught, you have to pay the 84 RMB fine there. She should have – what they told her what she should have done was just go buy a new ticket if you lost it, pretty simple stuff. [LW: Yeah] The interesting thing is, the reason why we’re talking about this is because she was blue-eyed, blonde-haired and white. That’s right, she was not a Chinese person, she is a foreign national. LW: Now this is – that’s interesting, because I doubt that that would – would that even be a story if, if it were that…‘cause that seems like – I’m pretty sure that happens all the time, surely… BK: Yeah, I’ve seen that, yeah, with, with, with local citizens, yes. LW: Yeah, I would assume that if it was a local citizen this wouldn’t, this wouldn’t have even made it to us. BK: No, no. And this actually happened again in the Shanghai metro, last year. It was a male foreigner, probably also a white person who did the same thing. LW: Yeah, that’s quite strange. You mentioned that it’s foreigners as well, but we do want to stress that everyone behaves badly. [BK: People.] People behave badly, and laws are there to, because people are, people, you know, if left to their own devices, you know, will, a lot of people will take shortcuts and try and find ways around it or behave poorly. WY: And also, there has been several news, for one of them, a couple years ago a foreign punched a bus driver in Chengdu, after missing his own stop and refusing to pay the full fare. I think this is ridiculous, and that has been reported, and also, I think all these kind of behaviors, maybe just people in another country, they should be responsible for themselves and also being behaved. So [BK: Right] that is why I think these kind of news has been reported by social media could be a good thing, so that letting people just have the awareness of this. BK: Right, right. You should always be on good behavior, but especially when in a foreign country, I mean you’re a guest I guess you could say. So… LW: Yeah, I would, I would, go a little bit further than that as well Brian, and say that you have a responsibility as well. When you, when you’re in a different place and in a different culture, you have a responsibility to behave in a certain way, maybe above and beyond what would normally exist, [BK: Yeah, I would agree] what would normally exist [BK: More respectful], because even if you don’t… WY: Another case, which is quite famous is that two years ago, a foreigner driving an unregistered motorbike hit a woman and then claimed that she was trying to scam him and cursed at her, and this has been videotaped by many people around them. And also, it has went viral online at that time. And then someone said, is that woman really a scammer, and is that man really hit her? People didn’t know, but after investigation that people found out, this man and his dad were working in Beijing without a permit, and it was him hitting the woman. BK: Right, right. And the reason why this is more interesting is because, we do see this kind of scam sometimes where, because people don’t have legal protection like a good Samaritan where you help someone and you’re in good faith, some people will pretend to get and then blame you and try to scam you out of money. WY: I would simply say that, no matter it’s a foreigner or a local citizen, they just need to do the same thing, that’s like obey the law, obey the rule, and if they break the law, if they trying to scam others, they will get certain responsibilities, they will face the consequences. Everyone is equal. LW: What happened to this woman, this woman that actually, that jumped the turnstile, what was her fine? BK: It was just 84 kuai [LW: Really?] yeah. LW: Was that the fine? BK: Yeah, it’s, I think it’s like, what, five times the amount of the regular ticket plus a replacement ticket. LW: Seems like a reasonable [BK: Yeah, yeah] fine.