Whilst living and working in Guangzhou, I had regular chats with our middle-aged office cleaner, Mrs Zhao, who seemed to much prefer these chat-breaks to sweeping our dusty floors. One Thursday she didn't turn up for work, and since I was unsure of her working hours, I thought nothing of it. One day later, she reappeared...with a horribly swollen black eye, scratches on her arms and a handbag which had had its strap half torn off. She apologised for not coming to work the day before, and duly explained what had happened: Early on the Wednesday evening, after picking up her wages from one of her employers she had decided to take stroll down by the Pearl River. The riverside walkway was by no means deserted, she told me. On the contrary, it was filled with other like-minded people out to enjoy the evening air.
"There I was, minding my own business, when someone came up behind me and grabbed my bag. He didn't reckon on me being so quick to grab it back though, and I put up so much of a struggle that he had to punch me in the face to try and get me to let go. He never managed to get anything from me in the end." I was slightly shocked to hear her story, and the blunt emotionless way in which she recounted it for me, but I was not overly surprised that our street-wise cleaner had put up a fight. "Are you ok now?" I asked. "Did you go to the police to report the thief?" Her response was frighteningly cynical: "The police around here are all in cahoots with the thieves. At least 70% of the police here are corrupt. There's no point going to the police. The maximum the thief will get is a week in a cell."
Not wanting to offend or upset her with my questions about where she had got her dubious statistics from, I opted for an easier question. "What happened to the thief? Didn't the bystanders do anything to help you?" I asked. "Well, about five of them got a hold of the thief and beat him up. They really smashed his face in." she replied. Was that a slight hint of satisfaction I detected in her voice? Ah, I thought, perhaps we were getting closer to the reason why Mrs Zhao never reported the incident to the police. Vigilante-style justice probably wouldn't receive a warm reception from the 30% of the police who aren't corrupt. I couldn't help wondering whether a Western crowd would've reacted similarly. My guess is that maybe they would as long as they thought that the police wouldn't find out.
From that point onwards in our conversation, it was as though I had unleashed a hidden torrent of extreme opinion. Even if Mrs Zhao was not concussed, the things which she said would lead most people to believe otherwise. I wanted to tap into her opinions on Chinese society. "What is the solution to the divide between the rich and the poor which forces people to thieve?" I asked. "There is no real solution." she blurted out. "There are too many people in China, that's the problem. There just aren't enough jobs to go around." At that point her eyes seemed to flicker, as an idea came to her. "We need a war..." (With whom she didn't say.) "...where around a third of the population is killed off. That would go some way to alleviating the pressures of overcrowding and help make things more equal." I was speechless.
I've never heard anyone openly advocate such an extreme 'solution' to China's population problems. Was this the fanatical side of the Chinese psyche which last reared its ugly head during the Cultural Revolution? This woman, who probably grew up during those troubled years, seemed to have forgotten so many of history's important lessons, which her government is so keen on trumpeting with reference to China's relations with Japan, and appeared hungry for another episode of anarchic destruction. With whom she did not say, which gave me hope that at least she had not given her 'solution' much serious thought. I'm just glad that in my two years of living in China Mrs Zhao is the only person I have met, who holds such extreme views.
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