14 DAY TRIAL // It's always nice to hear stories about generous and selfless people who do the right thing when they face a situation where they have to choose between being honest and skipping principles. This is the kind of story I'm about to present now.
An honest taxi driver from China proved that he doesn't believe in the childish chant “finders keepers, losers weepers,” as he recently showed the nature of his character when he found a stack of cash in the back of his cab and gave it back to the rightful owners.
Zhao Lei discovered that someone had left 170,000 yuan ($27,200 or €19,900) in a paper bag on the back seat of his taxi, and instead of keeping the money for himself, he decided to return it to the passengers who forgot it there.
Mr. Zhao handed the huge sum – which is at least three times his annual salary – to the company which he works for so that they track down the passenger who lost it, in what can be called a perfect example of social solidarity.
According to Daily Mail, the incident happened in Harbin, the capital of north east China’s Heilongiiang Province, and after the news about Mr. Lei's generous gesture broke, he became an overnight celebrity in town.
As it turns out, the money belonged to a couple who explained that they were carrying so much cash with them because they were heading to an auto sales shop to buy a new car.
After recovering the money, the couple offered Mr. Lei a 10,000 yuan ($1,600 or €1,160) reward for his honesty, but he politely refused the cash saying that, “It's what I have to do. Anyone who lost such a big amount of money will go crazy. I won't take advantage of that.”
In China, taxi drivers earn less than 5,000 yuan ($800 or €580) a month although they work 14-hour shifts, six days a week.
A somehow similar incident happened at the beginning of last month in South Carolina, when a teacher and her son found $11,000 (€7,970) on the side of the road and turned the money over to police, although they would have most likely gotten away with keeping the money because nobody showed up to claim it.
In most parts of the world, the law requires a person who finds lost items, be they money or other object, to make a reasonable effort to locate the owner, so in my opinion, Zhao did what was right.