Maya Moore scored 53 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in Game 1 of the WBCA finals yesterday. Whatever superlatives you want to append to that statement, feel free to do so, but I'll just write this again: 53 points, 13 rebounds. This is where the focus should be: a remarkable individual effort from the world's best female basketball player on Chinese professional basketball's biggest stage. Imagine if LeBron James went for 53 in the NBA finals (or CBA finals, to complete the analogy). You'd want 800 words about that, right? Moore's Shanxi beat Zhejiang 96-92 to grab a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series.
The above video, posted two days ago, depicts about 20 staffers of Liaoning province's Anshan District People's Procuratorate beating five petitioners on September 29, 2010.
It's no secret that police officers often beat and humiliate petitioners to deter people from further petitioning. But this time, those on the receiving end of the abuse were themselves cops.
According to local news, the Procuratorate accused five officers of using torture during interrogations. The officers denied the charge, petitioned in front of the Procuratorate building, and were promptly beaten.
Earlier this month in Hainan province, this group beating. What happened?
"Chengguan beating people, I tell ya," cries Ms. Gao, a shop owner. "A gang of chengguan came and beat us."
Perhaps the yelling in the background is a cry of existential angst at a futile and heretofore meaningless life.
That every step has led to this exact moment. That even if fought and won, the tide of Fate would inevitably lead back to this very moment: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more.”* Oh, would the Heavens open and strike down these untermensch enforcing their slave morality!
At one point early in this video, there's a case to be made that these two men are not fighting but engaged in ballet, thus is the symmetry of their kicks. Then the fists fly, swinging roundhouses, a phone is kicked out from under one of their feet, and yeah, you realize they probably hate each other. But then they come together in a hug of sorts, the avuncular headlock, and when they finally part, standing toe to toe, you think: humanity has a chance.
The public hospital experience can be stressful in China, we get that. You have to register -- sometimes at two different windows -- pull a number -- sometimes twice, with a downstairs attendant and again with the physician -- and wait -- sometimes a very long time. But the number of videos we see of hospital fights seems alarmingly high.
Pickpocketing is a tough profession. It doesn’t pay much, for one. The legal risks are high. And if you get caught — at a university dorm, for instance — your existence will pretty much be disavowed by everyone you care about, and whatever happens, happens.
In Heyuan, Guangdong province — on December 2, according to the surveillance monitor’s timestamp (though the video was uploaded only three days ago) — two police officers stood back and watched as gangsters with cudgels and sticks beat the crap out of at least two people. No one quite knows the cause of the fight... Read more »
This video was actually posted to Youku last year, but neither I nor Deadspin editor Brian Hickey had seen it, so we decided to go with it as the opening fight today in Deadspin’s ongoing series Tuesday Night Fights. I don’t know what else to say except it’s amazing and epic and ridiculous and never, ever try this... Read more »
In Songyuan, Jilin province recently, government thugs were hired to bully villagers into accepting a lowball land requisition deal. According to the description on this video uploaded earlier today, the thugs told the villagers to acquiesce or get beat up. Villagers called the cops, who didn’t show up. No one should have been surprised: they... Read more »
