The other day, I headed into the city with Anne and Irene to run our errands. While out, we witnessed two locals engaged in a fist fight. Screaming, shouting and of course, a crowd gathering to watch. We actually witnessed one local man pull out a crow bar and beat another local with it. WOW. That was intense. The man's eyes were completely bulging out of his head (I am not kidding) and he was swinging. I couldn't get my camera out in time to capture the picture because we went by in the car. Witnessing a fight is not usual in Shanghai. However, we very rarely see physical contact. It's usually in the form of screaming, shouting and some shoving.
Watching that, it reminded me of the time when Anne told me about when Sam (who I had the pleasure of meeting at Thanksgiving last year) beat a local woman with a bicycle chain. Here's what happened. Sam worked near her apartment and decided to take the bicycle to work one day to get some exercise. She arrives in front of her office building and proceeds to park her bike. A local woman who works for the building, starts to speak to Sam in Chinese. Sam doesn't understand any Chinese, so she proceeds into the building.
Fast forward, at the end of the day, Sam returns to retrieve her bike. It's not in the spot where she left it. She looks around and finds it perched next to this wooden shack. She starts to remove the lock and the local woman starts to speak to Sam in Chinese again. She is completely oblivious and gets on her bike and tries to pedal away. The woman proceeds to grab her and won't let her go. Sam in response, starts to hit the woman with her bicycle chain.
OK. This is where I need to tell you that Sam is a really lovely woman. I've seen her several times and would have never thought that she had a violent streak. Then again, one never knows right? After much confusion, complete with crowd gathering to watch, a colleague of Sam explains that she had to pay the woman 1 RMB (about 25 cents) to park her bike. Sam, highly embarrassed, sheepishly hands over the money and rides away. I'm not sure if she ever rode the bike to work again. Sam has since left Shanghai (is it because of this incident?) and is living in Hong Kong. I hope that she doesn't do this to anyone in Hong Kong. Then again, many do speak English, so I trust that it won't happen again.
