The trivial and madcap escapades of drunken expats rarely rise to the level of serious news, the kind that might be featured on, oh, the Telegraph. But recently, a standoff between locals in Shanghai and foreign revelers on the popular bar street Yongkang Road escalated to such heights that the Telegraph’s Tom Phillips reported on it in an article headlined, “Shanghai residents declare war on drunken expats.”
Furious locals “dumped water” on some 200 noisy foreigners who enjoying the nightlife on Yongkang Road, one of Shanghai’s most popular bar streets, last weekend.
A local government official told the Global Times newspaper they would now “force” the street’s bars – whose clients are largely European – to close by 10pm.
Video of the water-dumping, which reportedly happened Saturday, March 9, is above. Here’s how one British expat, 28-year-old Michael Ashford, described the scene to Phillips: “The place was absolutely crawling with people, mainly non-Chinese. It was quite crazy really, how many people were out – and it was loud. Out the corner of my eye I saw movement outside, then a loud bang and a collective gasp as people got drenched. [I am] not sure whether it was freezing cold water or something other than water. Some people started yelling abuse up at the window and sticking middle fingers up.”
A Smart Shanghai piece in December 2011 describes Yongkang Road as “the new center of the universe.” Here are some pictures of it during calmer times, via Fiona Reilly of Life on Nanchang Lu:
Shanghai residents declare war on drunken expats (The Telegraph)
The cleanest the water would have been is pig-water. I shudder think about what else might have been in it though. But does this mean I can pour water on the fireworks my neighbors set off outside my window every Saturday morning?
If you did that, they’d call the police and you’d be sacrificed. It’s only ok of they Chinese fuck with foreigners. Not the other way around.
Hey now…we know everything is done in accordance with Chinese law!
Yeah, a bar street over old-people apartments. Genius move by the local gov’t, which of course is issuing the permits for these places.
I wandered over there last year and was like wtf, never even heard about the place and it was already in full swing, with tiny places all down the block and the chuckleheads getting started on their night (I have gotten old recently but still usually keep fairly up on new things like this).
Don’t live on a bar street. Problem solved.
You will be dead of old age before you get those local residents to leave, hell they probably own their apartments so how can they just leave? Telling old people to move is just meaningless, they won’t agree.
Dump bleach and ammonia on bar street and clean out the filth, problem solved.
Intermittently flap around the street impersonating an albatross. No one likes an albatross
To be honest expats tend to be rawdier drunks than the local Chinese. If this happened in Canada it wouldn’t even make news unless it was preceded by a hockey game and a riot followed. I seriously don’t see how this matters in any shape or form, aside from the fact they were expats. I thought it’s just something people all over the world mutually do, you know, throwing shit on drunks. It’s not like they’ll remember to sue next morning, and if they’re in college chances are they’ll just think its a funny story later.
Just bad property management – lack of relationship management, and lack of respect to tenants. Just bad bad development