Guijie, the prominent dining street on Dongzhimen Inner Street in Beijing, was the scene of a terrifying brawl on Sunday around 5:30 pm, according to the description on the above video, recently uploaded by Ai Weiwei. There are scant details, but the description also says the fight was between Han Chinese and Tibetan street peddlers/stall-keepers. There are lots of projectiles.
北京簋街 汉族餐饮店与藏族摊贩群殴：youtu.be/SxOCpzbD5dY?a（来自@youtube）
— 艾未未Ai Weiweiさん (@aiww) 2013年5月12日
Just past the two-minute mark, we see a woman lying on the ground, probably unconscious, as a girl holds up her hand and cries hysterically.
More details as they become available.
(H/T Alicia)
If it true that this was an ethnic brawl I can only say its not surprising. Han hegemony in China and increasingly around the world is going to result in more and more of this. It doesn’t help that most Han have a massive chip on their shoulder and are frankly quite racist.
In England they would be up against all the Muslims and Romanian pick pockets.
Oops, did I just say that out loud?
I think you might be reading too much into this. The sidewalks in Guijie are packed. It’s a restaurant street, and each restaurant has people standing in the sidewalks and streets trying to pull in more customers. They also lay out lots of chairs for overflow, and they have patrons park right on the sidewalk as well. This squeezes the crowds of people walking by looking for a place to eat. Then you have lots of street merchants, Tibetan and otherwise, trying to sell stuff to all the passersby. In that environment, there’s a lot of opportunity for conflict.
Yes. All of your reasons logically explain why a people of one kind would start fighting with another people of another kind and escalate into a “huge brawl”.
Race is such an oversimplification when the ties that bind are so much stronger when it involves knick knacks.
Yeah, because no one ever fights over money in China. /s
The Tibetan merchants definitely stick together, and that’s why they all turned up to back their friends when the fight went down, but I think it’s pointless to try and weave this into some grand narrative of oppression and Han hegemony. As far as I can tell, someone smashed a vendor’s cart and he called all his friends, resulting in a big fight. It happens every day in China, though not always with Tibetans and usually not posted to Twitter by Ai Weiwei.
The power of a few bricks ! Always pack some bricks in your backpack.
And where is the huge brawl in the video? all I see is bunch of maybe 5 street sellers throwing chair and few stones in the other direction and that’s all, any fight at local restaurant/bar is bigger than this
I hope police checked their license, because they were for sure there legally as street sellers are usually.
Seriously though, this is pretty retarded. Go China!
girl standing with the red jacket tied around her waste at 4:38 seems to be the same one who was knocked out at the two-minute mark, so that’s good.
i give the cops high marks for restraint, but seemed to have no plan for dealing with escalation. when the violence and destruction is still ongoing like it is here, isn’t that reason to slap on some bracelets?