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.