Well, you run an open comments system, someone always has to come along and crap in the salad. We present to you: the Beijing Cream Troll, who was sober enough to post under multiple identities, but not to switch up his IP address:

Whoever this individual was, he’s expended more time and energy on this site in the last few weeks than Tao, me or any of our usual writers. Like an unpaid intern who’ll do anything just to be noticed, this guy went the distance – and more. He deserves Recognition. Respect. In language he’d understand, “Rogering.”

But what do we really know about him?

1) He thinks the true measure of a chap is whether he buys his round. You can pour bile on other religions, lie about yourself and spew homophobia, but God help you if you don’t settle your bar tab – you’ve crossed a line, mister!

2) He’s on conversational terms with the Black Sun Bar management. Although its ownership has changed over the years, and the Black Sun is hardly anyone’s idea of a destination spot these days.

3) He also seems to think the Hidden Tree, which closed in 2005, is still a thing. So, someone whose Beijing heyday was a decade ago, perhaps.

4) He reckons Alexa is something people use:

5) It’s not just race hate – he’s embraced sexism and homophobia to make the full trifecta. Oh dammit, I missed one: he has a beef with the trans community, too.

6) We’re looking for a schoolboy wit who might reference “used tampons” or “smegma” when deep in his cups. See above.

7) Master of Sock Puppets: Whoever he is, this guy makes Johann Hari look like Sooty. Not only does he set up multiple accounts offering a chorus line of criticism and/or praise, he likes to fend off detractors by impersonating them to write – yes – vile abuse. (See below link.)

8) He’s a staunch defender of Shaun Rein and Chris Devonshire-Ellis.

9) He knows a surprising amount about Chris Devonshire-Ellis. And the bar/nightclub Maggie’s.

10) He’s a stern critic of the Peking Duck blog, China Law Blog, Ryan McLaughlin of Lost Laowai blog and pretty much anyone who’s ever written about Chris Devonshire-Ellis.

Who could it be?

It’s Friday night just past midnight. You’re standing on a curb in Sanlitun after a pint/dinner/book talk/whatever looking for a cab. You see a green and yellow car driving your way, the little red light in the windshield beckoning. Already thinking of that book on your bedside, you raise your hand high and step forward in anticipation.

Then something weird happens. The cabby sees you and swerves. He’s gone out of his way to avoid you and then drives twenty meters down the street to pick up that Chinese couple so drunk their embrace may be the only thing keeping them upright. Are you the victim of a racist driver? Or are you a victim of the douchey laowai?

On Weibo recently, the Ministry of Public Security posted a series of pictures from early Sunday morning near Gongti West Gate showing a group of foreigners taking liberties with a drunk Chinese guy. As The Nanfang explains:

An eyewitness named Xu described the situation:

First they used their feet to step on the man’s body and head. Then, they took turns to hoist the man up by their shoulders, and then put him down. They took pictures throughout.

Xu said the foreign men “fiddled” with the drunk man for 20 minutes. The men also displayed poor manners by displaying their middle fingers to pedestrians and using coarse language.

A rickshaw driver present at the scene said he saw the foreigners “torment” the unconscious man.

Being discerning news recipients, you know the difficulty in extracting nuance from smart phone snaps, so will come to some reasonable conclusions: a) the Chinese guy is well and truly out of it (like, gone), b) the laowai don’t know him, and c) they are being loutish at best.

Now imagine you are China’s Internet mob and you might come to conclusion d): foreigners being foreigners.

This isn’t a good thing.

“Beat them,” says uncle_impearl; “Dogs,” says 个人化1994.  小红娃娃 believes that, “Beijing society’s public security has lots of hidden dangers, this is the foremost!” while为蚊子补水的狼 thinks, “It’s no different from the Japanese invasion of China, just a different style.”

You’ll notice that conclusion d) uses a broad brush; it doesn’t separate the businessman from the student from the tourist from the Beijing lifer. It takes Youku videos of red-in-the-face laowai and collates them with all their personal interactions and experiences.

Lacking a scientific study with a representative sample and well-constructed hypotheses, here is a thesis: The more laowai act like douches around Sanlitun, the more pervasive d) will become. The more pervasive d) becomes, the worse life becomes for all of us. Don’t be a douche.

Christian works freelance in Beijing and tweets at @cdcshepherd.

So, the Blue Frog in Sanlitun Village has closed, packed its shit up and moved two doors down (to the old Spirit & Spice venue) to make way for the arrival of Pizza Express, a UK chain that does Italian food.

That’s good news. Pizza Express does solid pizza, yer classic mid-range date night kinda joint: guessing a set lunch for 88 yuan, soup and a pizza plus glass of wine? That’s my bet.

More good news, though, is that the vague Frog connection gives us a peg, however tenuous, on which to hang this classic recording from 2008, which had inexplicably disappeared from the interwebs.

First published on the old Danwei under the headline “RMB 3 million foreign douche bag in Shanghai” — aged mp3 link newly restored! — the tape is a genuine recording from Sherpa’s from a freewheeling customer who really likes comped hamburgers and isn’t afraid to show it (City Weekend analysis here). At one point the brutal laowai tells the Sherpa’s operator, who gives her name as Sunny, that she doesn’t have a “sunny disposition” and chastises her on lacking a “sunny attitude.”

He adds almost immediately: “You’re a fucking bitch, you know that?”

Takeaways: one, some wankers out there, but they’re hopefully in the minority. Second, if you want to enjoy that Monday 2-4-1 deal, best hustle your lazy behind to the Frog in person.

UPDATE, Ed’s note, 4/14, 4:52 pm: Transcribing this conversation, I noticed how incredibly lonely our multimillionaire foreigner seems to be. Money can buy a lot of things, but someone on the phone to talk to — a Sherpa’s operator, for instance — is so precious as to elude the dirty dollar.

Anyway, for the love of God, we hope that our operator (named either Sophie or Sunny, though it’s likely both are fake work names) got a huge bonus for putting up for this d-bag — and, incidentally, for being the greatest customer service operator we’ve ever encountered.

The full transcript of the conversation:

Operator: This is [Sophie?], how can I help you?

Foreigner: Okay, ahem, I have a question for you. I order food from Sherpa’s very often, many times, okay? So let me ask you, so from Blue Frog — okay? — Blue Frog…

Operator: Yeah?

Foreigner: …restaurant Blue Frog?

Operator: What’s wrong?

Foreigner: My question is, on Monday nights, on Mondays it’s Burger Night, so you buy one hamburger you get one free, so if I order from Sherpa’s, it’s the same thing?

Operator: Uh, no.

Foreigner: No? OK. Then, see, that policy, because then you will lose business because instead of ordering from Sherpa’s from now on I’ll just go to Blue Frog on Mondays.

Operator: Okay, that’s fine.

Foreigner: Heh. “Okay, that’s fine”? I’m not sure your bosses… See, that’s a very bad attitude for you actually. See… you’re what, Chinese? You’re very… you don’t know how to do business, okay? Your boss I’m sure will be very upset with you to know that you said, “Okay, that’s fine.” Never say that to a customer, okay? I have 2,000 people below me in my company, I don’t… Let me teach you how to do business: never say that. Never say, “Okay, that’s fine.” You could lose your job. If I talked to your boss you could lose your job right now.

Operator: No. Thank you for teaching me.

Foreigner: What is your name and what is your ID number?

Operator: ID number?

Foreigner: Yeah. Give me your name. I’d like to talk to your manager actually.

Operator: Okay. Sunny. [Five seconds elapse] Hello?

Foreigner: Yes?

Operator: Hello? Can you hear me?

Foreigner: Yes? …I’m waiting to talk to your manager.

Operator: Okay.

Foreigner: What is your name?

Operator: Sunny.

Foreigner: What?

Operator: Sunny.

Foreigner: How do you spell that?

Operator: S-U-N-N-Y.

Foreigner: Sunny? Okay. Well you certainly don’t have a sunny disposition.

Operator: Sunny what?

Foreigner: You don’t have a sunny disposition.

Operator: Sunny disposition? What do you mean?

Foreigner: Attitude. You don’t have a sunny attitude.

Operator: Oh, God [mutters]…

Foreigner: So let me speak to your manager. You’re a fucking bitch, you know that? Let me speak to your manager. You have a very bad attitude.

Operator: Hello, sir. I just want, uh…

Foreigner: No! To a loyal customer — okay? — you should never speak to a customer with your attitude. I told you, I’m a big boss, I have 2,000 people under me, I would never… if any of my employees ever spoke to a customer the way you’ve spoken to me, they’d be fired so fast they can’t even collect their things. Your attitude is very bad. Do you understand?

Operator: I understand.

Foreigner: Do you want to apologize to me or should I take it up with your manager and maybe people even further up?

Operator: Before you will what?

Foreigner: Do you want to apologize to me for having a bad attitude?

Operator: Okay, I will try it. You give me the chance [unintelligible]. But, uh… yeah… I can apologize to you and I will say sorry to you but I don’t understand because you said…

Foreigner: You have… listen to me! Okay, you deal with foreigners, okay, you don’t deal with Chinese people. I know Chinese people are very rude, okay? In the whole world Chinese people are very rude, it’s a fact everyone knows, but you deal with foreigners, you have to be more polite, you cannot say things like that, what you said to me in the beginning. “Okay, go ahead.” You cannot say things like that to people, your customers. Okay? If your managers are not training you, not teaching you properly, then I will teach you, because I don’t want to listen to your bad attitude when I pay good money to your business, do you understand?

Operator: Yeah.

Foreigner: Do you understand?

Operator: Yeah I understand.

Foreigner: Okay, so… in lieu — which means in place of — me speaking to your manager I’m willing to accept for you to say, “Okay, I’m sorry, maybe I was a little bit rude, but in the future I will do better.” If you can say that then that’s fine.

Operator: Yeah, in the future I can do better.

Foreigner: Okay, no problem. Thank you very much.

Operator: [begins to say something]

Foreigners: And uh, that’s the thing, China there’s one way, but if you have to work with us, with Americans, with Europeans, with foreigners, you have to learn our manners, okay? And I know it takes time, but I think you’ve made one step today and I hope you learn more and I hope you do very well, okay?

Operator: Well thank you for being a very passion and good teacher.

Foreigner: And it’s just advice, it’s just friendly advice, okay? I mean, okay, I… I make 3 million RMB a year and I’m only 30 years old, there’s a reason. I work hard and I treat clients well, I’m never rude to clients, okay? Because… you work for Sherpa’s, without me — I’m the client — without me, there’s no Sherpa’s; with no Sherpa’s, you have no job. So, the point is, always be nice to the customer no matter what they say, okay?

Operator: Okay.

Foreigner: That’s it. Thank you very much. Okay, bye-bye.

Sharon Kui Yee-Tak, a 25-year-old former teacher’s aide at Frost School, a Maryland-based private school for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities, is believed to have fled to Hong Kong, where her brother resides.

According to wusa9.com, the victim’s father, Minister Ronald Harding, revealed his son’s torment and abuse by the hands of a trusted adult and teacher by “literally ripping pieces of the door panel off the inside of our car.”

Timeline:

Nov 3: Kui visits the boy’s home
Nov 10: Kui visits the victim and asked if he would have sex with her. Victim tells parent.
Nov 11: Sharon is fired from school and police start investigation.
Nov 13: a day after an arrest warrant was obtained, Sharon flees

Maryland police allege that Kui had entered the student’s home on Sunday morning and sexually abused the 15-year-old autistic teen in two incidents that took place while the student’s family was attending church.

Communication between the defendant and her pupil is believed to have originated through the exchanging of sexually suggestive text messages, a clear violation of boundaries between teacher and student that resulted in Kui being suspended.

Kui is charged with sexual solicitation of a minor, sex abuse of a minor and two counts of third-degree sex offense. She may be traveling with her boyfriend. WUSA reports:

“I think the Chinese government will have sufficient investigative leads to try and locate her. I don’t think it’s a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” Police said.

SMCP adds:

Kui graduated from the University of Maryland in 2011. One of her friends told the Washington Post in an interview that she was stunned by the allegations and did not believe Kui was capable of them. The newspaper also cited a statement of charges saying Kui phoned the victim on the night his family contacted police and told him she would “flee the country rather than go to jail”.

Montgomery police are reportedly working with Hong Kong officials to try to extradite Kui. A Hong Kong police spokesman said the force would not comment on individual cases.

This is not the first time that a pedagogue wanted for sexual assault has fled to China.

LFS campus at Qingpu

A 32-year-old American teacher surnamed McMahon was detained on May 13 under suspicion of sexual assault, reports Xinhua. He worked at Lycee Francais de Shanghai (LFS), an elite French private school.

Reports AFP:

The Shanghai kindergarten teacher was seized by police last month after seven families filed formal accusations against him, alleging sexual abuse and rape of students of both sexes, several parents said.

…[One] mother said her child started behaving oddly soon after they moved to China.

“My daughter was having nervous breakdowns, she was scratching herself on her face and thighs,” she said. “As we had just arrived in China I figured it was exhaustion from moving countries; I didn’t worry about it.”

LFS employed another teacher, also American, who was earlier “extradited to the US on similar charges.”

Foreign teachers in April were placed under scrutiny after two high-profile cases of sexual assault were brought to public attention. And Chinese instructors have had their own problems recently, of course.

LFS management has given their statement. Again, AFP:

Management at the Lycee Francais de Shanghai said: “Families have lodged complaints with the Chinese police against a teacher at the French school of Shanghai over assaults on their children. The investigation is being carried out by the Chinese police and is ongoing.”

American teacher held in Shanghai over allegations of child sex abuse (AFP via SCMP)

We all know the feeling of losing our cool, but how many of us know the misfortune of having a meltdown secretly filmed and uploaded to Youku, where it gets 390,000 views in half a day?

Check out the above, which happened recently in Chengdu, according to the Youku description. A foreigner, because he almost misses a bus, begins cursing at the bus driver in up to three languages, while everyone else watches in silence.

I can’t make out what the bus driver is saying, but among the things the foreigner utters in English are, “Look at me! Look!” and, “Fucking!”

After taking a seat, still fuming, he directs his anger at the other passengers, some of whom are presumably staring at him. “You look at me and you’re like, ha ha ha ha,” the foreigner says, a line that can’t help but remind us of this similarly incensed foreigner in Sanya Airport (the Ni you ha ha ha wo – 你有哈哈哈我 – guy).

He has a few last words for the bus driver, too, after wiping his brow. “You fucking piece of shit,” he says. “You see me fuckin’ running, huh? You saw me fuckin’ running! Huh?”

Remember the above? The picture appeared on Sina Weibo in March, with the accompanying message:

A group of laowai collectively pee on a Shanghai overpass, while smirking!  Can only say __ doesn’t have national boundaries! Please fill in the blank!

The incident was investigated, with police eventually saying no punishment would come to the foreigners due to a lack of relevant laws.

Well, it turns out that’s not completely true. As reported by Shanghai Daily, two of the six foreigners pictured above have been fined — a whopping total of 100 yuan each. The ruling was historic:

It was the first time that foreigners were punished for urinating in public. Local rules state that urinating and defecating in public will incur fines of 100 and 200 yuan respectively.

Netizens aren’t amused.

“Finally I see punishment, but only 100 yuan for peeing on the elevated highway while parking in the wrong place costs 200?” questioned a Weibo user “bhzlittle.”

“They should be punished to clean the city’s elevated highways,” complained another.

Four of the six foreigners apparently have already left the country. They escaped the 100-rmb fine, equivalent to about one and a half cocktails in a posh bar.

The two who were caught were a Dane and a German.

In a final interesting twist, as noted by Eric Fish, People’s Daily reprinted a separate Shanghai Daily article on this incident, only changed “urinating” to “pissing.”

Two of the six foreigners who were caught pissing openly on an elevated highway indowntown Shanghai in March had been identified by authorities and fined 100 yuaneach, officials said today.

Interesting style guide they have over there. Update, 2:37 pm: Or maybe Shanghai Daily edited out “pissing” on the sly. There will be no further updates on this.

Netizens slam 100-yuan fine to 2 foreigners for peeing on road (Shanghai Daily)

A 63-year-old American who was convicted twice of child porn offenses was reportedly working at a Nanjing school until between 2007 and earlier this year, reports the Chinese newspaper Modern Express. He apparently left the country two months ago.

In light of this case and the one of Neil Robinson, who was detained in Beijing last week, the State Administration of Foreign Experts issued an “urgent notice,” according to SCMP, “on regulating the teachers’ ‘daily activities.’”

“Regulating daily activities” sounds unnecessarily Orwellian, and we can only guess what that might entail. If you’re working as a certified teacher in China, at a university or anywhere else, please let us know if you find your work conditions affected in the near future.

SCMP continues:

Education experts said the scandals highlighted major loopholes in the management of foreign teachers after a surge in demand in recent years, with mainlanders developing “blind trust” in Westerners in the hope of building their oral English skills.

Xiong Bingqi , deputy director of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute, said although a set of regulations on hiring procedures for foreign teachers was in place, “they are never observed properly”.

Of course protocals aren’t always observed properly. The loopholes exist in the fortresses of bureaucracy because people understand that the vast majority of foreigners applying to teach are not pedophiles or sociopaths, are in fact simply people who enjoy teaching, or want to, and can make a living doing it.

It’s the few rotten apples that ruin it for everyone else, and if we’ve seemed a bit aggressive recently in making that point, we hope the point at least doesn’t get lost. Ultimately, red tape can lead to good, if correctly used. The current foreign teacher recruitment and hiring process could use reform. Paperwork for the sake of paperwork is counterproductive, but at the very least, authorities can be more conscientious with background checks (start with google), they can familiarize themselves with sex offender registries (again, google), and maybe, for once, pause to exercise some judgment before making that hire for the sake of impressing parents.

Foreign English teachers face scrutiny after sex scandals in Beijing, Nanjing (SCMP, H/T RFH)

Neil Robinson is wanted by the Surrey police “in connection with the distribution of indecent images of children and the rape of a child,” according to BBC’s Crimewatch. This bit of info was posted to Reddit China by user gaiushe yesterday, who claims he has known Robinson for the past five years and is certain that he worked at an international school in Beijing.

That’s Beijing got in touch with gaiushe via direct messaging and confirmed that the school in question is Beijing World Youth Academy. Robinson’s online resume confirms that he worked at “Beijing World Youth academy High School as a Business teacher for years 10, 11 and 12.”

The school’s website also shows a teacher named Robinson was scheduled to chaperone a 15-day school trip to Denver, Colorado in January 2012. That’s Beijing got in touch with an organizer of that trip:

Li Meng, the organizer of the winter camp, told That’s that he is certain that Robinson worked at the school, and that he was indeed scheduled to be a ‘leader’ for the camp but “did not go.”

Afterwards, Li contacted us to retract his statement, saying “the guy left our school a long time ago, several years in fact… the information online [that he was a team leader on the Denver trip] is wrong… many of my colleagues have been asked about this. He is not our employee.”

A spokeswoman for the Beijing World Youth Academy told us she has been working at the school for six months and that there was “no one called Neil currently working at the school.

“If you want to speak to our manager… you’d better call back after May 6,” she added.

Neil Robinson’s online resume

Those who know of Robinson’s whereabouts — he is, again, wanted by British police for child rape — are advised to contact the Chaoyang District police at 85953400 or Surrey Police at (00 44) 01483 639 862.

Alleged British Paedophile is living in Beijing – and teaching? (That’s Beijing)

UPDATE, 4:56 pm: Matt Dalton has dug up a newsletter, dated October 2010, in which Robinson, a “pastoral principal,” addresses the parents of students attending Beijing World Youth Academy:

UPDATE, 4/25, 3 am: Uh… what? Via Beijing Kids:

Former students of Robinson report that he was a generally well-liked teacher who once joked that he was “writing a porn novel”.

UPDATE, 4/27, 12:26 pm: Robinson is now in custody in Beijing and awaiting transfer to UK authorities.

UPDATE, 1/15/14, 6:15 pm: He’s been sentenced to 12 years. Via BBC:

A man who was extradited to the UK from China has been jailed for 12 years for historical sex offences.

Neil Robinson, 47, formerly of Staines in Surrey, admitted three counts of sex with a girl under 13 and three indecent assaults at a previous hearing at Guildford Crown Court.

According to Sina, the man, surnamed Alsubate, “pushed down a woman of 30 and stripped her, trying to rape her outside a KFC store in downtown Changsha at around 6 am Thursay, according to a witness surnamed Yang.”

Mr. Yang was the one who called the police.

The Associated Press identifies the assailant as “Alsubaie,” and reports he has confessed.

According to a statement posted on the Changsha police’s microblog, the man said he had drunk alcohol early Thursday morning and when he saw a woman inside a restaurant at around 6 a.m., he molested her inside and outside the establishment.

Shanghai Daily adds that the KFC was on Jiefang Road, and that the man, “about 1.6 meters tall, wore slippers.” It also quotes the eyewitness surnamed Yang.

A witness, surnamed Yang, said they thought the two were lovers as they were “hugging and pushing” each other, but it soon turned violent.

“Several others joined me to stop him,” Yang said. “When we went up, the man stood up and grabbed his pants to cover his lower body. We were very angry and a young girl scolded him in English,” he added.

Some witnesses then started beating the foreigner. He uttered words in English as he tried to dodge the blows, Yang said.

The incident reminds everyone of an alleged sexual assault that occurred last May in Beijing, also involving a foreigner who was beaten. Perhaps you remember the weird video. Some netizens are passing around a screenshot from that incident in connection with this story.

More info as it becomes available.

(H/T Two Americans in China)

These are the worst type of stories. The. Worst. What we have is a foreigner and Chinese person arguing at Sanya Airport in Hainan province. (What is it with Sanya? We saw another foreigner and Chinese person tussle earlier.) The foreigner, wearing a fannypack, accuses the Chinese of cursing and “beating” him. The Chinese — or whoever is the one filming — later posts this nationalistic tripe on Youku (a video that’s been viewed 225,000 times in the last 12 hours):

Laowai is “beaten” at Sanya Airport: look at the laowai’s logic, he absolutely loses it after being lightly touched, doesn’t reflect on his own mistake, critically examine himself — wake a little, laowai, China is strong now!

The story, if you believe the laowai speaking mangled Mandarin, is that he was “beaten” and laughed at (“laughed at,” in this case, rendered as “ha ha ha ha ha”). He admits to smoking — “I was wrong” — but then claims that the other guy cursed him first, which was enough to set off this firestorm.

He says Ni you ha ha ha wo – “you laughed at me” — three times. The first time, I thought it was the worst line of Chinese I’ve ever heard.

By the third time, I was laughing. Andy Kauffman would be proud of this guy.

Some Chinese dude, falling so, so hard for the laowai’s real-life trolling, begins snapping, “China’s already strong now! China’s alreay strong now!” Meanwhile, the laowai chirps that he doesn’t want to listen.

A police officer politely informs the man that they can look at surveillance footage. “Very good,” the foreigner says. “You can watch him beat me.”

“Don’t get agitated,” the officer says, reasonably.

“Everyone ha ha ha me…”

It goes on like this for another half-minute before the video mercifully stops. The. Worst.

(H/T Reddit)

Longtime China resident Cam MacMurchy, who ran the well-respected Zhongnanhai blog for several years before co-founding The Nanfang earlier this year, is nothing if not a reasonable and fair writer. We’ve watched from afar as The Nanfang, a community-driven website covering the Pearl River Delta, has steadily grown, expanding its listings every week while continuing to produce interesting content on its blog.

But you know what they say about media: you haven’t made it until you’re notorious, and you’re not notorious until you’ve pissed people off. This week, The Nanfang has made it.

Here’s a story of honest words, hurt feelings, empty threats, and expat blowback — and wrapped up in all of it, perhaps a cautionary tale for restaurant owners everywhere. As MacMurchy tells it: 

One for the Road has contacted us regarding our review, in which one of our staff visited One for the Road and wrote about their experience. In our view, the review was fair and based on the writer’s impressions of the food quality, ambiance, price, and service. The review attracted several comments, with some explicitly disagreeing with the review’s conclusions. Those comments all remain on the site and can be reviewed here.

The owner of One for the Road, Jason Cakebread, contacted us to dispute the review and requested us remove the bar’s listing and event information from The Nanfang.

A few emails were then exchanged, in which Cakebread slowly but surely loses his composure. It’s like watching water boil. As documented on The Nanfang, Cakebread’s first email to MacMurchy begins:

You are entitled to write any form of review you wish about what ever establishment you wish.

However, I never gave you idiots permission to place One for the Road or her events in your website.

We do not want our good name associated with your sorry excuse of a website/magazine.

And then he drops a curse:

As I said, write any review you wish as the people who have gone to One for the Road know it’s full of shit.

Followed by, of course, a threat (Ed’s note, 6:44 pm: for clarification, the threat here refers to Cakebread’s desire to have The Nanfang remove his establishment from its listings, a strange request that reeks of nose-cutting to spite the face):

If this is not done we will pursue the matter further as we have consulted our lawyer who says we have grounds to sue.

MacMurchy responds with a kindly written albeit slightly long email, in which he states:

We hope to work cooperatively with One for the Road going forward. We receive substantial traffic from overseas and Hong Kong, specifically from people who are unfamiliar with Dongguan and are looking for a place to eat, have a beer, and relax. Many of these people stumble upon your bar’s listing page, and I have no doubt that many have visited your bar as a result. We have the legal right to list your bar’s information on our website, however would regretfully remove it as a courtesy should you restate your request to do so.

For a second, or a minute, there is hope for a tenuous truce, a belated understanding. Cakebread’s anger thus allayed, hatchets buried, the respective parties put their heads togeth…

Your review was absolute shod, we are not just here for hangovers greasy food burgers and mash!

Oh. Nevermind then.

You can see the place this is headed, and that place is all-caps:

PLEASE BELIEVE ME I HAVE ALREADY CONSULTED OUR LAWYER AND ANYONE THAT KNOWS ME WILL TELL YOU I WILL FOLLOW THROUGH!

We’re guessing MacMurchy chuckled a little before sending his reply, another long, polite email that concludes:

I’d like to reiterate that we have a legal right to list public venues in a database of bars and restaurants. We do this as a service to both our readership and our bar and restaurant partners. As of today, we have over 1,000 venues – many of which are in Dongguan – comprising the largest English-language bar and restaurant database in the Pearl River Delta. Our readers have found us to be a very useful resource, and we will continue to be so with or without One for the Road in our listings. As a courtesy and according to your request, will will remove One for the Road listings and event information within the next 24 hours.

Best of luck with the restaurant.

Regards,

Cam.

Do you want to take a gander on who comes out of this looking better?

If you are ever in Dongguan, never ever visit One for The Road bar / restaurant bit.ly/TSGMWP @zhongnanhai

— Jeremy Goldkorn 金玉米 (@goldkorn) October 24, 2012

But could Cakebread have known, all along, exactly what he was doing? As a businessman, his response certainly makes him look overly sensitive, childish, and petty, but might his restaurant come out stronger for it? You know what they say about publicity, I’m sure. There’s no such thing as the bad kind.

Perhaps time will tell. In any case, we want to give One for the Road a fair shake — here’s its website.

We’ve removed the image of him first found on The Nanfang.

Pictured is Robert Dean McDowell, an American in Shenzhen who’s being investigated for rape, as announced yesterday by the Nanhu Police Station in Shenzhen’s Luohu District, reported by Shenzhen Daily.

The alleged rape of a Chinese 16-year-old girl, whom McDowell is said to have gotten drunk, happened on September 23. We’re not sure why this is only now being reported, but nonetheless, Shenzhen Daily again:

According to Chinese law, raping a girl younger than 14 is statutory rape. But penalties for raping a girl younger than 18 also are more severe than those for raping an adult.

The case was transferred to the criminal investigation department because of McDowell’s status as a foreigner and more details could not be released, police said.

Several expatriates who knew McDowell and refused to be identified said he had lived in cities including Shenzhen and Dongguan for years, and very often hung out at bars and clubs in the Guomao area. His line of work involved trade between Shenzhen and the United States.

This incident will not be helping trade between Shenzhen and the United States. We will probably be hearing more about this McDowell figure, much to our dismay. His alleged crime is somewhat much worse than random assault and carjacking.

(H/T The Nanfang)

In Guilin, Guangxi Autonomous Region yesterday around 10:30 am, a foreigner who is initially identified as “a black man… dressed completely in jet-black” was filmed attacking random people at Wenchang Bridge. The Youku description (video embedded after the jump) tells us that an “approximately 80-year-old, white-haired elderly woman was picked up by him and thrown to the ground.” You can see it in the video just past the one-minute mark, and yeah, it looks terrible. A Chinese man then appears from the bottom of the screen and intercepts this man. The foreigner flees and is chased, while others come out of the woodwork to kick him as he flies past.

Netizens at first assumed he was African, but according to this writeup via GLTVS, a journalist learned from police that he’s actually a 51-year-old from France. (African/European misbehaving on tape… hmm, where have we seen this before?) The man is currently in police custody; the reasons for his behavior are as yet unknown.

Here’s a good peek at what he looks like, via a Guilin message board:

Update, 1:55 pm: GLTVS article, translated in part (errors are mine):

By the time this journalist arrived at the scene, police had already rushed over and taken the offender away. Although the crowd that had gathered had largely dispersed, those who lingered were still extremely upset about what just transpired. One resident told this journalist about the entire affair:

Eyewitness: I was coming from over there when I saw a black-haired, very dark man cut off someone to have a word. And then here comes a man, an old man, almost 60 years old, [the foreigner] presses him to the bridge, ready to throw him in the river, and then the [old man] runs away. After he’s run away, [the foreigner] stands there, there’s no one, and by that point someone had already called 110 [the police].

But while cops were coming over, this foreigner would carry out yet another act of violence.

Eyewitness: “At this time, someone dialed 110, and here comes another woman, so then [he] grabs this woman and also slaps her and also pulls on her clothes, ripped her clothes from behind, beat her from the front, in total might have attacked six or seven people like this. ([Question] How much time passed?) Time eh? Almost half an hour. In this half an hour, here comes another woman dressed in red, and then the man standing on the bridge nearly tears the clothes right off this woman, and then this woman tears her clothes off and runs away. Afterwards, here comes an old person, it’s a woman, maybe seventy, eighty years old, [the foreigner] seizes this old woman, grabs her by the head, like this, kuangdang [an onomatopoeia to describe things falling] there she goes.”

Beijing News reports that on Friday afternoon, a foreigner got drunk at a downtown hotel, slashed a server with a kitchen knife, carjacked a minibus black Buick, crashed into four other vehicles, and hit a pedestrian. Then he tried to flee by foot before two passersby and a police officer subdued him.

Several witnesses said they saw the man wielding two knives at around 3:40 pm at Kyoto Garden Hotel at Jianguomen. The article also states that he looked like he was on drugs.

Hotel manager Ms. Zhu was quoted as saying that this foreigner was a guest at the hotel and “is Russian.”

“He had already been drinking a lot when he checked in this morning,” she said. “I told the servers to pay extra attention, but I never would have thought that such an incident would happen in the afternoon.”

We’ve seen our share of bad laowai on this site, but this guy ranks right up there with the worst. Usually the black-out drunk foreigners in this city stumble around being very loud, crash a movie and shout “Uhmerica!” at inappropriate times, maybe pee in public or get into a fight or two. Knifing and car-stealing aren’t part of the equation. Whatever liquor this one consumed, be advised: avoid.

UPDATE, 10/18, 1:41 pm: A revised chronology: man walked into a hotel, took two knives, slashed waiter, jumped into a Buick that was waiting to be washed, crashed into minibus plus a few other cars, drove on the sidewalk, knocked down a pedestrian, attempted to flee on foot, ran into a restaurant where a chef was having a meeting with his staff, ran out, chased down by chef and another man, arrested. Still being investigated.