(CFP)

'If I fall on the ground, please help me!" This was the slogan held on the placards of 10 seniors, all over 70, who participated in a performance art event in a bustling downtown area of Zhengzhou, central China's Henan Province, on December 25, 2013.

"We've heard quite a few reports of passers-by hesitating to help seniors who fall down in the street," said Li Chang'an, one of the performers. "It seems that our society is becoming cold-hearted and we feel anxious. Seniors need help."

"If it were 10 years ago, I would definitely help them, but now I would give it second thought," said a Zhengzhou resident surnamed Yang, who declined to give his full name.

A dilemma

Both Li and Yang's concerns have a solid grounding, even if they are opposed to one another, as there were more than 10 controversial cases involving people helping fallen elderly citizens in 2013 alone.

On October 30, 2013, two students from Hepu Middle School in Shantou, south China's Guangdong Province, saw an old man fall from his bicycle. They escorted the man back to his home. Later, the man unexpectedly accused the students of knocking him down and asked for compensation.

The two students felt that they were being extorted and turned to the police for help. After investigation, the students were found to have been wrongly accused by the man, who then apologized for "being senile."

A similar incident occurred in Dazhou, Sichuan Province in the southwest, on June 15 last year. A 74-year-old woman surnamed Jiang fell down in the street and broke her leg. Three children went to assist her but were accused of knocking her down.

The dispute between Jiang and those who helped her lasted more than five months with the parents of the three children finally taking the matter to court. On November 22, Jiang was sentenced to seven days of administrative detention for extortion.

Although there were a number of incidents in 2013, the trend stretches further back. A particularly infamous incident took place on November 20, 2006. An old woman fell to the ground and broke her leg after being jostled at a bus stop in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

A young man, Peng Yu, claimed that he helped the woman up and escorted her to hospital. Later the woman and her family took the man to court, where it was ruled that Peng should pay 40 percent of her medical costs.

The judge's ruling read that it was likely that Peng had bumped into the old woman, given that he was the first person to get off the bus when the old woman was pushed down in front of the bus door, otherwise he would have left soon after sending the woman to the hospital instead of staying there for her diagnosis. "Peng's behavior obviously went against common sense," the ruling said.

This "reasoning" angered the whole nation. From then on, the number of pedestrians helping old people in need dramatically decreased.

On January 4, 2013, a 68-year-old man was found on the ground on the way to a vegetable market in Haikou, Hainan Province in south China. Although passers-by stopped and circled, no one took any action until one person called for an ambulance. Before the ambulance arrived, the man had already died.

In the wake of this case, old people also learned that the best way to get help was to shout a disclaimer for their would-be helpers. An old man in Henan was reported to shout out, "I fell down myself, I will not extort anybody, please help me!" after falling down and finding that nobody dared to help him last November.