There are two black police circles on the ground at the Guangzhou Foshan hardware market.
The first marks where two-year-old Wang Yue was hit and run over by a white van, and where she lay dying as 18 passers-by walked on, indifferent to her fate.
The second shows where the 19th person, a kindly grandmother, picked her up and gently placed her out of the way of further harm. Her help came too late. In the early hours of Friday morning the little girl's heart stopped beating.
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At the market where Little Yueyue, as her parents nicknamed her, lived and died, four open-fronted stores have a clear line of sight to circle number one. It seems unimaginable that the owners would not have noticed a toddler being run down on their threshold.
But all four have the same story. No one saw the girl until they heard the screams of her mother. On the day of the accident, they said, it had been raining torrentially. "The rain was hammering on the metal roof of the market," said Tan Jingzhao, 27, who runs a shop selling bolt cutters and drills.
Mr Tan's desk is fewer than ten paces to circle number one. He has a 16-month-old boy himself. But although he heard Yueyue's weak cries, he said he did not realise what was happening in the gloom in front of him, beyond his computer screen.
"It was very dark that day and usually lots of the children here cry when there is rain and thunder. I had no idea," he said.
Mr Chen, at the store opposite, Shao Yu Water Heaters, was one of the 18 passers-by. But he also fiercely denied having seen her. "We would admit it if we had seen her, but if you ask me 10,000 times, I would still answer you that I did not," he said. "We have had calls cursing me and blaming me and calling me heartless, but the truth is I did not see her," he said.
