Thursday, January 27, 2011

You picked the wrong dead end street to beat up your GF

I love the picture window in my living room. Right in front of the window is a dead end street and just past the street is the Olympic Park. The park has lots of lovely green foliage - it feels like an ocean that holds the city at bay, far away from us.

The other night around 9pm I was walking past the window and I saw a car parked on the dead end street. Nothing unusual there - people often park on this street and make out.

But what happened next is not common.

Two people came out of one car and started fighting. Like a fist fight. Now that I think about it, I've seen more fist fights in my 6 years in China than I've seen in my whole life. I don't know what it is about Beijing but it seems to turn people into some amateur version of Mike Tyson.

So anyway, turns out this fight was between a man and a woman. And the man was kicking her ass. Literally. He pulled her out of the car, pushed her on the ground and punched her.

He picked the wrong dead end street for this.

I yelled at my husband to call the police, which he dutifully did. But I ran out of patience when they didn't arrive within 30 seconds and besides the poor woman was really taking a beating out there. So I put my long black coat on over my pajamas and headed for the door.

Buddy stopped me mid-way and asked me what I had in mind.

That's when it occurred to me that I didn't have a plan. Those of you who know me are nodding your heads knowingly. I love you guys. And please know that if anyone is ever kicking your ass I will come to rescue. I will have no plan but at least we can get our asses kicked together.

I made up a plan quickly. I was going to stun the guy by speaking English and then kick him a few times.

Per usual, it all sounded good in my head but kind of fell apart the more I talked.

Buddy came up with a better plan - he would go down.

This was a much better plan, for many reasons:
1) He's stronger than me.
2) He speaks better Chinese than me. (Yes, I know, English was one of the key points in my battle plan but let's face it, we are in China and both the attacker and victim were presumably Chinese.)
3) He was not in his pajamas.

So he got in our car and drove over to them. He rolled down the window and asked the guy what was going on. This embarrassed the guy, who like the true coward that he is, quickly got into his car and drove off. Leaving his bruised female companion on the street. Classy.

Buddy asked the girl if she knew that guy and she said no but he owed her 5,000 RMB. This is where her story starts to fall apart. I mean, either someone is a complete stranger or they owe you money. Can't be both. Unless you're a really stupid loan shark. But this doesn't matter. Guys shouldn't beat up girls for any reason.

And definitely not on the dead end street right in front of our house.

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Epilogue: The girl walked to the subway station and we never saw her again. The police showed up about 30 minutes after the whole thing was over and took some random pictures of the gravel on the street. They might as well have taken pictures of the stars for heaven's sake.