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In the scorching heat of summer, while cities bake under the sun, sanitation workers remain at their posts. But in Datong, Shanxi, two workers went beyond their usual duties: they spent four hours digging through 8 tons of trash — bare-handed — to retrieve a GPS-enabled children’s watch lost by a tourist’s child.
This isn’t Schindler’s List, but a “Chinese-style warmth” story, as framed by Shanxi Evening News.
Here’s what happened: Ms. Lu from Shenzhen, Guangdong, was traveling in Datong with her child. While on a high-speed train, her child put the watch into a paper trash bag “for fun.” They left it on the train, discarded with the rest of the garbage. Fortunately, the watch had a GPS tracker and still pinged from the Datong South Station area. Naturally, she called the government hotline and requested that the sanitation system be mobilized to retrieve this "lost artifact of destiny."
Upon receiving the order, Datong's XinCheng Environmental Services immediately demonstrated their "people-first service spirit" — transferring compacted garbage blocks to an empty lot, and dispatching two sanitation workers to comb through 8 tons of household waste with their hands.
It was sweltering. The smell, unbearable. But not a problem for these “beauticians of the city” in the New Era.
Four hours later, the watch was miraculously found and returned to Ms. Lu that same evening. She was moved to tears:
“I was ready to give up, but their persistence touched me. I never expected such warmth from a small city.”
She tried to send red packets (cash tips) to the workers as thanks — which were politely declined. And so, the story reached its moral climax.
The reporter closed with the usual coda: “What was recovered was not just a watch, but also our most basic faith in human kindness.”
Meanwhile, the workers who combed the trash remained silent. They said nothing to the media, as if they were merely symbolic hands representing Datong’s moral values.
In a society that truly respects people, the job of sanitation workers is to clean the city — not to become costly raw material for moral theater. They deserve fair pay, not to be “moved.” They deserve dignity, not to be repackaged as emotional tokens of selfless sacrifice.
But here, two “replaceable” people toiled through heat and stench to perform a compulsory, celebrated, and romanticized form of overtime.
They had no choice — to refuse is “irresponsible.”
They had no voice — to speak up would be “too harsh.”
Their sweat, along with the watch, was filed away under “positive energy,” buried beneath 8 tons of trash and 8 tons of public sentiment.
Whose heart, exactly, was warmed?
Perhaps only the reporter knows — when the paycheck clears.