1:34 am. I descend the steps down one of Beijing’s many pedestrian bridges. I’m returning from an unamed bar in Beijing’s Southeast and feeling a little groggy. Only another couple minutes until I reach the gate behind my apartment. I’ll reach the gate and then unlock it with my keys. After that, I’ll have to unlock the front door. Once I close the front door to my apartment, I’ll have to unlock the small lock to my room. Thinking of my locked-up world, I reach into my pocket and jiggle the keys around, just to make sure that they are still there. Check. I walk past the street lights and into the darkness of the small roadside park that runs parallel to the 2nd ring road. I pass a couple discussing something, heatedly.
After a few steps I hear a noise behind me. SMACK! A woman sobs. I turn around. The couple that I have just passed is now arguing in loud voices. The man has clearly just hit the woman in the face. She rubs her cheek and sheds tears. I freeze in my tracks and watch like a deer caught in headlights, wondering what to do. They don’t see me. I’m separated by them by about 100 feet, standing in the shadows of the trees and the leaves in the small pathway park. The man raises his hand and hits the woman in the face 3 more times. My blood rushes to my head. Before I know what I’m doing, I begin walking towards the scene with a determined stride. My fingertips begin to sweat in anticipation. I think about my fists and what possessions I have on me. My mind snaps to the diabolo that is inside of my bag, and I imagine pulling it out, grabbing the diabolo by its top, and whacking the man on the back of the head with it, should he hit the the girl again. I’m surprised at how easily I yearn to resort to violence and hit this man. Unsure of my next move, I approach the scene and reach my hand out, placing it on the man’s right shoulder. He’s much bigger than me and doesn’t even acknowledge my presence, keeping his eyes pierced on the girl…
Karaoke
2 years ago, JiangxiW Province, PingxiangW City, after midnight. It’s the first and only time I’ll ever stay in Pingxiang. I often pass through Pingxiang when I return to YichunW. Each time the train slips through the city I say to myself, “one day I’ll go there and see what’s up.” I have a few students from Pingxiang, and decide to visit one of them. It’s Winter, and the night before I arrived very late and found a ludicrously cheap hotel room for 15RMB per night. Despite the fact that the room doesn’t have it’s own restroom, and I have to bathe by heating up boiling bucket of water and pouring it’s contents slowly over my body, I’m satisfied with the experience. On this day, I met up with one of my students and visited the coal town of Anyuan, famous for it’s coal plant, Marxist architecture, and a statue of a young Mao Ze Dong carrying an umbrella. It’s late now, and I’m returning to my hole for the evening. I enjoy Pingxiang’s night lights that seem to run along most river towns in the evening.
As I pass a karaoke bar, I see a man and woman yelling in the street. A young boy of about 6 years old sits on the sidewalk between them crying loudly. The man’s face is red, his voice is loud, and he points his finger directly into the woman’s face gesticulating loudly in local unintelligible Pingxiang dialect. The woman wears high heals and a black dress. She is quite pretty, her hair flowing over the buttons on the dress’ back. Suddenly the man slaps the woman in the face with force. Other passersby stop to watch. I feel my head get hot and walk over to the skirmish. The man points in the woman’s face again and slaps her once more. The second slap is no softer than the first. Their child (I assume the boy is their child) cries even louder, sitting in the sidewalk looking up at the young woman. I walk over to man, and put my hand on his arm. Knowing full well that he is drunk and irrational at this point, I prepare myself for the possibility that he has a knife and may attack me. It doesn’t matter. It’s too late. My hand is already on his shoulder. The man doesn’t acknowledge me; instead, he continues to point at his wife. I open my mouth to speak.
“Stop hitting your wife. Look at your son!” I point at the boy sitting in the street, still crying, now looking at me, with fear or curiousity I’m not sure.
The woman continues crying, and the man continues to stare at her, not looking in my direction. They are locked in battle. I feel out of place, but do not budge. My body prepares itself for the onslaught of a drunken man’s violence, but luckily it doesn’t come. He doesn’t reach into his pocket to pull out a knife. He doesn’t turn to look at me or even address me. It’s like he doesn’t even know I’m there.
Not my business
The present. 1:42am. My hand grabs the man’s shoulder. The girl continues to cry.
“You can’t do that. You can’t just hit a woman. If you want to hit someone you can hit me. Are you listening to me?” I don’t have to try to sound angry. Once again I prepare myself for his attack. I have the mental image of going to work the next day missing one of two front teeth. This guy is big, and I don’t know if I would stand a chance or not.
“Get out of here. This is none of your business!” The girl yells at me with tears streaming down her face. “Go away!”
“He shouldn’t hit you!” I snap back, surprising myself with the amount of force in my own voice. I feel angered by her words, almost hurt.
“I don’t want to leave until you two leave. He can’t just hit you out here.”
“Go away! Go away! This is none of your business!” She is insistent. Her tears continue to pour out.
I walk away back into the shadows, but I don’t leave. I’m determined to walk back out, should the man start beating her again. I watch as they slowly walk in the other direction, under the light of the yellow streetlamps. An elderly couple approaches from the distance, silently shuffling along.
Suddenly, I feel the presence of someone sitting near me. There, less than 5 feet away from me is a young park security guard calmly sending messages or playing a game on his mobile phone. Looking at him sitting there playing his game, I feel my blood rise to my head again.
“You’re a security guard right?” I ask him.
He looks up at me lazily. “Yeah, that’s right,” he says.
“Did you just see that man beating that woman? Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you help me? You could’ve called some of the other park’s guards to come and help her.”
“We don’t interfere with those kinds of things. That’s not our job.”
I just say one sentence. “If that’s not your job, then what the hell is it that you do here?” I don’t wait for him to respond. Turning away from him, I walk towards the elderly couple. I reach into my pocket and feel for my keys again. My fingertips are still sweaty. Thinking about the scene I just witnessed my mind turns to the guard, to the man, to Pingxiang, and I repeat the word over and over again in my head: coward, coward, coward…
