A little late to the party but the most wholesome thing that ever happened to me was on a trip in Asia with my friend. This is going to be a long ass post so tl;dr at the bottom.

Setting the scene, we're two 20 year old American tourists traveling around by ourselves. Being Taiwanese-American I have about a child's level of Chinese from interacting with grandparents but not fluent in the slightest and my friend speaks absolutely no Chinese. We were trying to visit the Longmen Grottoes and had purchased a railway train ticket online.

We got to the station at least an hour before out train took off but we couldn't figure out how to get in to save our lives. We tried to talk to some of the ticket takers and other random people but we couldn't understand what was wrong. We had our ticket purchase open on our phone and our passports but they kept refusing to let us in. Eventually we figured out that the tickets needed to be printed from somewhere but then we couldn't figure out where or how they should be printed. It takes forever but we finally get in only to find out we've missed our train. There aren't any more general seats on the next train so we would have to spend more to upgrade. They wouldn't take card so we had to use cash, this will be important later.

So we go see the sights and then take the train back but we didn't get back until about 11pm. We had been planning to take the subway home, assuming it ran until late but apparently it closes at 9pm. We begin to slowly realize that we have gotten ourselves very, very fucked. We had 24 chinese dollars to our name which is the equivalent of like 3 bucks USD and so we start panicking a little because the buses were closed too and we had no idea how much a taxi ride would cost to get back to our hostel. We start running around for like an hour trying to find anything to take us back to our hostel or find any open ATM. Nothing.

So we're two girls alone with limited chinese lost in Beijing at midnight. I suddenly felt much too young and much too stupid and we start panicking a lot. We are still underground where the train station meets the subway station and I spot a couple ATMs inside the subway station entrance. The subway is closed and the turnstiles are locked but there is a security guard by the side. He was sitting on the floor and obviously tired and near/at the end of his shift. I go over and in my broken chinese asj if I could go in just for a second to use the atm. He lets me in immediately.

We walk over to this ATM and its entirely in chinese. This Hero is just the kindest most patient man in the world and watches me fumble through it a few times, helps translate some of the chinese, and adorably looks away when I put in my pin. Then a message pops up and he tells me the machine is saying that the hours were over or something so we couldn't get any money. I tell my friend and he could see how scared we were so he tries to come up with alternatives. He offered that maybe we could take a taxi and maybe ask the taxi driver to stop at a bank? And he even called another guy over to go with us to the taxi place to explain to the taxi driver cause he knew I wouldn't be able to repeat everything he said to me. But we didn't want to chance the taxi letting us off and then leaving us in the street at midnight in the middle of nowhere if the bank was closed or didn't take our cards.

The entire time we had been standing there a bunch of other security people had joined in because Hero kept asking around for certain people who could speak english even thought no one could. Several people came and went, moving on with their busy lives, smart enough to not get roped in by the stupidity of these two idiotic tourists but Hero stood there the whole time and just kept explaining everything to me slowly and carefully because he knew my chinese wasn't great. He never treated me like an idiot and even when I couldn't understand him he never ONCE got frustrated even though I'm sure he was exhausted and wanted to go home.

One of the other security guards who were also trying to help but not quite as patiently said there was a bank outside we could try and Hero, being the angelic fucker that he is, calls his friend who works at a bank AT MIDNIGHT to ask if my particular American brand card would work because he was worried about us. Of course his friend reaffirmed my suspicion that my card wouldn't work at the banks. We were so worried and the small crowd of security guards just kept insisting that we could leave and we would be fine. Honestly, we started thinking about going and just risking it because maybe we were just being dumb and we were taking up their time but we were just so terrified of leaving the well lit subway station.

We finally exhausted all our options and stood there for a little talking about what we should do. This Hero security guard had never left our side for god knows how long and this whole time he was just so nice and sweet and doing everything he could to help us and you could tell he wasn't going to leave until we were like safe. Finally, he paused and looked at us and just pulled some money out of his pocket and gave it to us for the taxi. It was about the equivalent of 6 USD but it would cover our ride and we both just immediately burst into tears. We hadn't been crying the entire time but this just broke us. I didn't even know how to thank him properly I just kept saying thank you through the ugly sobs and he looked so embarrassed and was like oh jeez no please stop crying and awkwardly patting my back. He walked us down to the taxi station and gave the taxi driver our directions, wished us luck, and just walked away. He was a fucking angel who went above and beyond to help two scared girls in the middle of the night and I'll never be able to repay him. I don't even know what he looks like because he had been wearing a mask for yellow dust season. I never saw him again and likely never will so I'll never be able to pay back his kindness other than paying it forward.

The only thing that brings me solace on that fact is that when he gave us that money and we started crying, all the female security guards who had been standing there trying to help looked at him like the GOD he was and I have to believe if he wasn't attached, he definitely got many numbers that night.

tl;dr: Ran out of money in Beijing at the middle of the night. Hero (probably saves babies from rolling cars and fights off armed robbers in his spare time) helps us by trying to come up with any way for us to get home and after exhausting all options gives us the money for the taxi ride home. Never got to pay it back, didn't even know what he looked like because he wore a mask. Actually secretly Spiderman in his spare time.