Two men in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province decided to grab some quick money when night fell on July 15th. So they rode out their motorcycle and dashed to a pedestrian to grab his bag. What was in there head at the grab of the bag? Anything but the picture of being chased down by a superrich in Porsche and later cornered in a pond by his helicopter and launch.
It was about 6 p.m. when Mr. Liu Boquan was driving his son and a pilot friend on their way to dinner and saw the two on motorcycle robbing from a man on the side of the street. He immediately called the police and stepped on the gas to chase the two robbers. But there were too many cars on the road, Liu couldn’t manage to corner the motorbikeuntil 3 km away, though the Porsche was scratched. Robbers then dumped the bike and ran for their lives. One of them got caught when running up a hill not far away, the other ran into Bai Hua Li, a village in Changping Town with a lot of fields and ponds.
Liu, along with other police that followed up chased him into the center of the village, where they thought the robber met his dead end. But the robber suddenly dived into a 10 mu (about 6666.7 square meters) pond and swam towards the other bank. By then, the pond (pictured above) was surrounded by villagers.
About an hour later, the robber was still in water and seemed be exhausted. Liu shouted to get him on shore but the robber wouldn’t listen. For fear that the person might drawn himself, Liu decided to use his helicopter that parked a couples of hundreds meters away, the one that he used to send his son to school during traffic jam, to get the swimmer out of the water.
With the consent of police, Liu and his pilot flew the helicopter above the pond. The wings swirled up the water, Liu sat on the helicopter and shouted out for the robber meanwhile using some twigs to drive the robber ashore. There are at least 600 audience including reporters around witnessing the spectacular. With the hoots such as “beat him to death” “smash him”, the robber dared not to get closer to the bank for fear of being mass brawled.
20 minutes later, the robber still wouldn’t give in. Liu landed his helicopter but wouldn’t give up either. He suggested to police that he could use his private launch to rescue the robber. Before long, Liu’s launch arrived on a truck, by then police’s rubber boat was also there. Police thought the launch boat might stir up too many waves which could put the robber’s life in danger. Therefore police used their own rubber boat to get the robber.
At 9 p.m., the unlucky robber was finally taken captive.
Liu’s story of catching robber was quickly spread around the net and received mix comments. Some praised his bravery and thought his act helped to change the stereotype that rich always do bad thing. Skeptics on the other hand did a little math for Liu, taking in account the scratches on the Porsche, the gasoline of the helicopter and the delivery of the launch boat to the pond, Liu spent at least some hundreds of thousands yuan for the chase. So they concluded that Liu was showing off.
In his own defense, Liu said he didn’t need the fame. He did called the police at first. The reason he chased the robber and tried to rescue him was to perform the due obligation a civilian bears, and out of the instinct of justice. He also added that we all should support police, because they protect us, by giving out our money that we have, the strength that we bear, and the equipments we possess.
Liu is a vice-president of the chamber of commerce of Changping Town, owns couples of hotels in Dongguan City. He is also the first person in Dongguan to get pilot license for delta-winged motorized glider. (Source from Nanfang Daily)
14 comments
that was sort of a tough read…
1rd
I can’t think of anything constructive to say.
If I were to be in his place, I would have probably done the same thing. Showing off or not, I’m thinking from a poor collage kid’s perspective, so that’s not really helpful. Nevertheless, I don’t think the guy was purposely showing off, at least not when he initially chased the robbers with his porsche. lol
Rich guy in need of an adrenaline rush. There are a couple of funny passages: “dashed to a pedestrian”, “robbing from a man” omit the “from a” and it’s fine, “met his dead end”, “might drawn himself” suggests intended suicide and it’s spelled drown, “using some twigs to drive him ashore” I doubt twigs would have any effect here, “with the hoots,,” probably hoot is the wrong word to use here. There are many grammatical mistakes and the story could have used a little proof reading. I know it’s not east to write stuff like this in your second language so I am not trying to be a grammar Nazi, just pointing out a couple of minor goofs.
Hey thanks for pointing them out. You’re right, thinking in Chinese while writing in English is hard, I’ll just try try my best.
I didn’t think it was that bad, and “GuoBao” is not 100% correct; “dashed to a pedestrian” means they ran to him quickly and is correct. “Robbing from a man” is correct but passive voice. “Robbing a man” is active voice so it sounds more exciting but both are OK. “Hoots” can mean disorganized yelling, and that is correct in that sentence. Also, “met his dead end” means the robber had no where else to run and is also correct. Strangely, in English “met his end” means he is dead but “met his dead end” is just no where else to run.
The only strong mistakes are “drawn” should be “drowned” and “in there head” should be “in their heads”. The use of “twigs” was very funny; a twig is a very, very small stick from a tree. Usually twigs are no thicker than a pencil. Just “sticks” would be a better choice.
I wonder why there isn’t a police helicopter in a city of almost 7 million people! It’s on the border with Hong Kong so you’d think they would need one to watch for smuggling goods or illegal entry/exit.
I wouldn’t mobilize a chopper for such a small-scaled robbery that happens too often everyday.
I have to fight you on a couple of those mate. Although dashed might technically be acceptable I don’t know anyone who would use that word in that context. Similarly “hoots” doesn’t convey the right message (imo) and there are at least 4 or 5 better words to choose from. “Met his dead end”. Do you know anyone who would phrase it like that? Really? Again I don’t want to blast Annie Lee but “found himself at a dead end”, “had nowhere to run” or “got cornered” would be much better picks.
First, good job Annie Lee. If people criticize your use of words, it means the grammar and spelling is probably good.
I’ve noticed that it’s really hard to know how a word is spelled based on one person’s accent. For instance, there was a student at my school whose name was Ajar. In the US, you’d write Ajer (like “a jerk”, but without the k). But that’s (basically) how British people say “Asia”, so we all figured his name was Asia and not Ajer. We were mistaken about this for something like 18 months.
Secondly, in the US, people prefer the active voice to the passive.
“Would you please pass me the salt,” is grammatically correct, but in active voice.
“Would the salt please be passed to me by you,” is also grammatically correct, but in passive voice, and it sounds weird as hell.
There’s a balance between these, but when in doubt use active voice. It takes fewer words, and you won’t sound like a bureaucrat or a politician. The main use of the passive voice (as far as I can tell) is to indicate a state rather than a process. But that means you don’t have to have someone to blame.
“All flights from Los Angles to Hong Kong will be suspended until further notice,” sounds bad, but there’s no one to blame. “I hereby suspend all flights from Los Angeles to Hong Kong until further notice,” then you know whose fault it is. Find the author and vote him out of office, then you get your flights back.
Thirdly:
“Some praised his bravery and thought his act helped to change the stereotype that rich always do bad thing.”
This is mostly for the native speakers, but think about how this sentence is different from:
“Some praised his bravery and thought his act helped change the stereotype that rich always do bad thing.”
I took out the word “to” from “to change”. That puts it in a different grammatical tense, which happens to need no other changes from the rest of the sentence. But what’s really different?
I’m not really sure, but to me the second one sounds more like the change in stereotype has already happened, and this event was perhaps pivotal in making it a thing of the past.
In the first one, it sounds like the stereotype is something people are dealing with now, and this even is chipping away at a mountain.
I say this was written right, but it’s a very small distinction and it’s very easy to get wrong. Good job Annie Lee. Very good job.
Lastly:
But it’s not perfect so don’t get a big head.
You do know all your ‘corrections’ here are all preferences for wordings which you opine to be ‘better’. Most are not really the ‘mistakes’ you initially described them to be, but like you say they are probably a bit oddly worded depending on where you receive your English roots.
If your intention is to help clarify to Annie on English usage, which appears to be the case, and not merely to bag her out then that’s fine; but you’re really going to have to distinguish a ‘correction’ from a ‘improvement’.
Batman puts Wayne Enterprises’ latest prototype to good use. Hee.
I was about to say the same thing. But on reflection, his more James Bond than Batman since he doesn’t wear a cape or a mask. Although that ‘sense of justice’ just has to go. Its going to get in the way. Shoot first, justice later MUAHAHAHAH
He just wanna his pride back , over the stuff that he lost.
Funny this incident reminds me of Iron Man 2 when Tony Stark got hauled up to congress to testify and he said something along the lines… “he successfully privatized world peace” using his iron man 2 suit. Being an hero is noble but some people in China wants the attention to inflate their own pride even further.
I dont think that it is for the hero rush, I think that the rush that man felt at the end of the day was doing a random act of kindness to another person. My new favorite party member! Way to go dood!