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When it comes to the good old USA, many people will praise their love of helping people. And that is true. It is true that Americans love to help people. But it is also true that Americans are selfish. They are not at all kind. If it touches their interests, they will not be polite to you.
First of all, kudos. When I go to New York, I often take the underground.I have to drag my heavy suitcase up the stairs to the surface streets.Often someone was behind me to help me push the box up. Once I moved to a new flat and that night there was no electricity and of course the heating was gone. The flat was heated by electricity. It was still quite cold in early spring time. It was hard without heating. As we were sighing and wondering how we were going to survive the cold spring night, we heard a soft knock on the door. It turned out to be the lady across the street knocking on the door. She was holding a quilt in one hand and a candle in the other. She said to us,"This quilt is clean, you can cover it if it's too cold, don't get sick. I had only been there a day and didn't know my neighbours well at all. That's really the people of the Redneck State.
I've really had a lot of help from Americans. One time I got off work in the middle of a big snowstorm. The boss told everyone to leave work early. My car had a short front end, so it sank into the snow at once.I was lazy and didn't have a small shovel in my car to shovel the snow off the front of my car. I called an auto rescue company and had to sit in the car and wait for help. After a while, a white guy knocked on my window and asked me if I had called the rescue company. I replied yes.He told me again. He told me that he would drive ahead, see the police,and I would speak to them again. I continued to sit in the car and waited for a while, when a small car stopped across the road and a guy got out.He knocked on my window and asked me if I had called for help. When I answered, he told me to keep the windows closed, that it was too cold and to wait for help. But he did not drive away. Her car was parked across the street and he was staying with me, probably worried about what I would do if anything happened to me. I waited until the rescue truck arrived and then the guy waved goodbye to me and left.
Of course Americans can be scary when they are calculating. I came home one night about 7 or 8 o'clock to find a car of who knows who parked in my space. We have two rows of parking spaces in front of each building in our neighbourhood. The row near the building is for the residents and is numbered, and the row further away is unnumbered and anyone can park there. Of course we all liked to park in front of the building, so we could go upstairs as soon as we got out of the car, which was very convenient.I was looking around and I didn't know whose car was parked in my space.The space next to me was empty and I thought it was 7pm or 8pm, so I guess no one was parking. Everyone who was supposed to be off work was off work.I parked my car in the space next to mine. I thought I would do it the next day. Early the next morning, I was about to leave the house when I saw a big note stuck to my car window. It read: I notice your car is parked in my space, please move it out of the way. I was really startled. Someone was staring at me in the dark. My pores stood up. I saw that the car was still parked in my space and I immediately rushed upstairs, wrote a note and did the same thing: I noticed your car parked in my space… I also put the note on the window of that car. Later I told a Chinese friend of mine about it. She said to me,"They are kind to you. Her neighbour does things more intimidating than I do as a neighbour. She lives on a side street, in one of those detached houses, what they call small villas in China, and they don't have a car park, so they draw lines on the street and mark out parking spaces. The front of her car was just a little bit over the line. She parked a little bit over the neighbour's space.The next day, the neighbour came knocking on the door to make a comment.She was very upset, "I didn't park in her space, just a little bit over the line. She knocked on the door to give her opinion. What a psycho. Finally,I realized that the old Americans are the first to be helpful and the first to be petty and calculating.No contradiction.You can help you enthusiastically, provided you don't violate her interests and don't take her things. As long as their own interests are not violated, the old Americans are indeed very eager to help others. But if you infringe on their interests, they will not take kindly to you, let alone to the crooked people. The same goes for their own countrymen. Personal interests are inviolable.