????4月20日（星球六）早上8:02，中國四川雅安發生地震的時候，趙玉璞還在距離震中88英里的成都家中安睡，但他仍然感覺到了地震。于是他迅速起床，穿上褲子，走到戶外。和中國其他擁有智能手機的20幾歲的年輕人一樣，他在第一時間登錄了微博。

????幾乎就在同時，相隔半個地球的美國麻省沃特敦地區發生了槍擊案（當時，當地警力正在集中追捕波士頓馬拉松爆炸案的第二名嫌犯）。美國發生的一系列暴力事件也牽動著趙玉璞的神經——不僅因為他曾在美國上過大學，而且因為三名遇難者之中有一名是他的中國同胞——現年23歲的沈陽籍波士頓大學（Boston University）研究生呂令子。當天與呂令子在一起的還有另外兩名中國同胞，其中一名叫周丹齡的就來自成都。周丹齡腹部受到重創，不過她有望脫離生命危險。

????就在地震發生時最慌亂的幾分鐘內，趙玉璞還在微博上關注災難動態。他發現有一半的帖子都跟雅安地震有關，另一半則是關于波士頓的。

????通常來說，美國發生的公共暴力事件不會引起中國太大的關注，即使關注，頂多也只是冷嘲熱諷——“喏，那就是美國，每個人都擁有槍支的地方。”——趙玉璞解釋說，中國人對美國槍擊案的反應一般如此。趙玉璞目前在《財富》（Fortune）雜志旗下全球論壇（Global Forum）擔任高級項目經理。

????如果你想知道中國官方如何評價美國人的生活質量，可以看看英文報紙《中國日報》（China Daily）在波士頓爆炸案發生一周后刊登的《2012年美國的人權紀錄》。其中，“關于生命與人身安全”部分引用了令人不寒而栗（但很準確）的FBI統計數據，以此窺見美國暴力犯罪現象。同時，這部分內容還援引了紐約市長邁克爾?布隆伯格于去年7月科羅拉多州奧羅拉市發生暴力槍擊案后在美國有線電視新聞網（CNN）發表的言論：“我認為世界上沒有哪個發達國家還存在像我們這樣嚴重的問題。”

????《工人日報》（Worker's Daily ）一位編輯在個人微博上就中國駐美大使崔天凱在波士頓醫療中心看望受傷留學生周丹齡一事表示不滿，因為在同一天吉林和龍市一個煤礦發生爆炸，造成18死9傷。他援引同事的感慨寫道：“死傷在中國井下的礦工什么時候也能享受這樣的待遇，那才證明人民的生命得到了同等的尊重。”

????但很顯然，波士頓爆炸深深牽動著許多中國人的心，我理解個中緣由。世界上每天都會有如此多可怕的事情發生。我們很難透徹地理解這些事，更不用說完全感受它們造成的影響。而這個時候，人際聯系會發揮很大作用。我也是上周才明白這個道理的。

????At 8:02 on Saturday morning, April 20, the earth shook in central China. Yupu Zhao was asleep in his bed in Chengdu, 88 miles from the epicenter in rural Sichuan Province. He still felt it -- he woke up fast — and once he got his pants on and went outdoors, Zhao did what any other Chinese twenty-something with a smartphone would do: He went straight to Weibo, China's popular microblog.

????At nearly the same moment, halfway around the world in Watertown, Mass., shots were fired as police converged on the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Zhao had a stake in those proceedings, too, and not just because he went to college in the States. Among the three fatalities was 23-year-old Lingzi Lu, a Boston University graduate student from Shenyang in northeast China. With Lu that day were two other Chinese nationals, one -- Danling Zhou — who suffered a serious abdominal wound, though she is expected to survive. Zhou is from Chengdu.

????As Zhao tracked his feed in those first few frenzied moments, half the posts were about what was happening in Sichuan. The other half were about what was happening in Boston.

????Ordinarily, an act of public violence in the U.S. wouldn't attract much attention in China, and what little it did might be cynical. As in, "Oh that's just the United States," Zhao, who is working for Fortune's Global Forum conference, explains, "everyone has guns."

????If you're looking for a sense of how Chinese officialdom, at least, views our quality of life, see "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012," published in the English language China Daily one week after the Boston

????bombings. The section on "Life and Personal Security" cites chilling (and accurate) FBI statistics on the scope of violent crime in America, and quotes New York Mayor Bloomberg, speaking on CNN in the wake of last summer's shooting rampage in Aurora, Colo.: "I don't think there's any other developed country in the world that has remotely the problem we have."

????Writing from his personal Weibo account, an editor at the Worker's Daily lightly chastised Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., for visiting the injured student Zhou at Boston Medical Center on a day when 18 Chinese miners died and nine were injured in an explosion in a coal mine in Helong, Jilin Province. "The day when the dead and injured coal mine workers receive the same treatment," he wrote, "will be the day that shows the people's lives are equally respected."

????But clearly the Boston bombings touched many Chinese deeply, and I understand why. So many awful things happen in the world every day. It's hard to keep them straight, much less absorb their full impact. A personal connection goes a long way. I learned that myself last week.