The Public Fight

In an SPR Coffee house in the university district of Beijing, at around 2pm on a tuesday, there is a young girl on the ground floor who has just loudly burst into tears.

She is a petite Chinese girl, sitting at a table with a Chinese boy who appears to be dumping her. Her vociferous sobs and quivering voice carry across the entirety of the busy café, but besides my American friend and me, who are thoroughly engrossed and spying from behind a curtain, no one seems to bat an eye.

The strangest thing is this boy and girl, in the midst of their intimate public display of lack of affection, are speaking almost entirely in English, only slipping in a Chinese sentence or two here and there when English fails them.

“Why-hy-hy are you do-ho-ho-ing this,” sobs the girl in English, loud enough for the entire café to hear, “after aaaaalll this time!”

“Listen,” says the boy sternly, in a slightly softer but still clearly audible voice, “I just know that you are not the right girl for me. I want to be very clear with you right now.” He pauses, then continues in a businesslike tone. “But if you think I have made the wrong decision, it is up to you to convince me of this.”

The girl bursts out in a fresh chorus of wails, while the café patrons around them continue to calmly sip coffee, impervious to the distinctive cries of the young female human in distress.

The boy’s cell phone rings, and he picks it up, speaking in rapid Chinese to the caller. He looks over at the girl, and says something in Chinese about scheduling interviews for the company. The girl, in roughly 2.8 seconds, pulls herself together and plucks the phone from the boy’s hand.

She takes a breath and answers the phone in a clear, steady voice that offers no suggestion of her current distress, schedules the necessary interviews for later that afternoon, then hangs up and resumes distress mode.

“Is this guerilla theater?” My friend, an American girl who has just arrived in Beijing, whispers to me.

I shrug, not sure what to say. I’ve never seen a display quite as bizarre or in your face as this one, but I have noticed that quarreling in public is quite common among young couples in China.

Walking down any Chinese street, you may pass by young lovebirds engaged in any one of the three stages of the Public Fight: they may be Loudly Bickering, possibly with the incorporation of an insincere fist or the shot put of a handbag, Hysterically Crying, with tears and sobs and running away from one another and chasing involved, or Making Up, sitting quietly on a step somewhere, faces red from crying, holding each other.

Although I still find this behavior somewhat bewildering, I’ve come to accept it is by no means unusual.

Perhaps it is a form of bonding in which the couple emerges stronger and more in love, as would be suggested by the plot lines of many a Chinese tv show which incorporate, or perhaps fabricated, the Hysterical Young Female or the Star Crossed Lovers driven mad by love that appears doomed by a simple misunderstanding but usually works out in the end.

In any case, by the time I have finished my cup of coffee and head for the door, today’s feature fight has brought the volume down several decibels and appears to be in the Making Up stage, or in any case, the couple are sitting quietly, more morose than a month of Wednesdays, staring into their cold cups of coffee- not speaking, but not separating either.

A Crowd Gathers

Go ahead, stop and stare- everyone else is.

2 am is a prime time for car accidents. At least it was for me, last Friday night. Sitting in the back with my friend, coming home from a concert, our taxi was sideswiped by a car running a red light as we turned left.

The car’s bumper is lying four lanes away, the hood is still smoking and the right front wheel has been torn off the axle. The other car is also facing the wrong direction in the wrong side of the road, its airbag also deployed.

I jump out of the smoky car as soon as it comes to a halt, shaking, and look around. My friend is making her way to the side of the road to sit down, and disoriented, it suddenly registers that the cab driver hasn’t gotten out. He is slumped in the front seat, with his head near the floor of the car.

Opening his door, I see he is conscious, and I think maybe he is trapped by his seatbelt, too scared to register that there isn’t a single cabbie in the whole city of Beijing who wears a seatbelt.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, fumbling for his seatbelt. He’s shaking too but yells out, hands on the floor of the cab, “ I’m looking for my cell phone!” The man has priorities.

Relieved, I run from the smoking car and realize, within 5 minutes, at 2 in the morning, a crowd of at least 20 has materialized from the dark night. Most of them are standing by the side of the road, but a few are growing bolder, venturing to where I am standing in the median of the empty road.

The other car involved sits empty. “The driver must have run,” offers a cheerful crowd member who sees me looking. “Drunk driver.”

The cab driver has found his cell phone and is limping towards me, blood running down his ankle. He borrows my cell phone as well, and begins frantically talking to the police and his cab company at the same time, one in each ear.

The crowd has about 60 members now, all men, mostly in pajamas, chatting about the crash and the involved players as if we have just thrown a makeshift party. Although few if none of them actually saw the crash, they are acting as a collective witness, judge and jury, and have unanimously declared our cab driver innocent, although he failed to notice the only other car on a deserted road barreling towards us with no intention of stopping.

After a half hour, the police arrive, and the crowd parts to let them through, helpfully offering a running commentary among themselves as the police talk to the cab driver, my friend and me.

I’ve noticed its not considered rude to stop in the street and stare in China, be it at the arrest of a drunk, a fight between shop keepers, or a traffic accident. In some situations, like mine today, it seems to be a perfectly acceptable way to express concern that the situation is handled correctly.

The bystanders made sure first that all of us were ok, than helped me even more than the police did in forcing the cab driver to give me a receipt as documentation and his contact information, essential if I were to persue the matter further.

Another time, in a recent neighborhood confrontation around the corner from my house, a shopkeeper was arguing with two police officers over the construction taking place in his building. Voices began to escalate, with the shopkeeper’s nose inches from the police officers. At one point the shopkeeper took a menacing step even closer to the police officer, at which point the crowd of 15 odd onlookers started to murmur- the shopkeeper looked around, stepped back, lowered his voice and kept talking.

I think it would be great if passersby in the US, where I’m from, took a more active interest in affairs that are left entirely in the hands of the police. Both police and citizens act differently when they know they are being watched, and thats usually a good thing.

Although this Chinese form of the neighborhood watch can be nosy and irritating, it leaves at least one aspect of police dealings out in the open.