Road rage is all the rage in China these days. Of course, this is not a phenomena that is limited to China; virtually anywhere there are cars and traffic, road rage pops up. In China, it comes with rather quirky trappings.
The press, not just in China, was peppered in mid-September with stories about Li Tianyi, 15, the son of the acclaimed singer Li Shuangjiang, who accosted a couple in Beijing over a traffic-induced slight. The younger Li, hopped out of his unregistered souped-up BMW and with a friend (himself driving an Army-registered Audi) proceeded to beat the crap out of the male half of the couple. He warned bystanders not to call the police. Nevertheless, he was arrested and given a years jail time. His father apologized quite profusely and publicly.
Some time ago, Li Qiming, the son of a police chief in Hebei province hit and killed a young woman while driving on a university campus. He then attempted to bully his way past security guards shouting “My father is Li Gang.”
In a less reported incident, this time in Anhui province, a young male driver was attempting to parallel park on a commercial street. On the sidewalk next to the road was a sign advertising the the adjacent shop. The driver managed to flatten the sign. To his credit, at least he was trying to actual parallel park; many Chinese drivers just stop as near to the curb as they can, altho far from parallel, and block traffic until they finish their business. At any rate, in this case, the shop keeper took exception to the destruction of his sign and came out of his shop to give the driver a piece of his mind. Things, predictably, escalated. The driver objected to the shopkeeper's objections, entered the store and trashed the place, ripping the phone out of the wall, smashing anything within reach. The shopkeeper's wife and baby were collateral damage, although, fortunately, not fatally. By this time a crowd had gathered, surrounding the store. If the driver had fantasies of a blitzkrieg and quick escape, they were firmly dashed. Someone called the police, who arrived shortly after. They took the young driver into custody.
That's when things began to get interesting, as the crowd departed from the usual passive pattern. This wasn’t just an afternoon’s entertainment. Apparently fearing that the driver would get off without punishment, the crowd took matters into their own hands. The estimated 2,000 people on the sidewalk and street surrounded the police car and refused to allow the cops to leave the scene with the young driver. They forced the cop and culprit out of the car and made them stand side-by-side next to the police car. Then, armed with the latest cell phones, they took pictures of the driver and the cop, as if to forever link the two. If the kid got off, they’d know who to blame. That was the idea, anyway.
The moral of the story, for me, is that the average people of China are getting more than fed up with the atmosphere of lawlessness, privilege and arrogance that is so much a part of some segments of Chinese society. Road Rage, Chinese style, is merely a symptom. It will be interesting to see if anything changes.
