Around 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 13, a semitrailer filled with watermelons overturned onto its side around 80 kilometers outside of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. The accident destroyed several dozen meters of safety guardrails, and the front of the truck was badly smashed.

Even worse, the watermelons that the truck was transporting dropped onto the farmland where the truck overturned, crushing hundreds of square meters of crops. The crash attracted many local villagers to the scene.

Unfortunately for the truck's driver, Jia, over half the watermelons were smashed. Jia said he works mostly with small operations. He transports and sells watermelons from Liaoning province to Wenzhou. On this trip, he took a brief rest in Taihu service zone and then continued on his way. When he crashed into the safety guardrails early that morning, it was in order to avoid another car. He swerved, and since his truck was so weighed down, the brakes didn't work fast enough.

The accident meant a huge loss for Jia's business. He had been transporting watermelons worth around 30,000 yuan, and most were broken. Mending his vehicle would also require money. Additionally, he knew he would need to compensate the farmers onto whose land he had crashed for their damaged crops and safety guardrails.

Luckily Jia was not injured in the accident. After talking it over with the relevant farmers, Jia offered 5,000 yuan in compensation. How to deal with the watermelons, however, became a trickier problem. Jia eventually sold all the broken watermelons to a villager for 3,000 yuan, and the villager sold each one for 10 yuan.

Many villagers came to buy the disfigured melons. Some even came on tricycles and brought bags so they could take several watermelons at one time. One middle-aged customer noted that these watermelons were cheaper than those sold at markets. Others said that they wanted to help support the owner, since the accident causes him such great losses.