Wrestling with a wife beater.

Tuesday was working out to be a dull day until I heard screaming and commotion coming from the stairs above my office.  I immediately ran upstairs to see one of our staff cowering  behind two of her workmates as a man was screaming at her.  The man was her husband.  She wants to get a divorce from him but he won't grant it.  He has battered her before and it was at least the fourth time he had come to our school to confront her.    Tuesday, he had managed to get to her office and hit a few times.  The woman tried to escape and so ended up at the stairwell when I came upon the scene.

I stood between the man and the girls and called another foreigner for help on my mobile phone.  When the man made a move at the girls, I pushed him away.  My colleague then arrived at the scene.  A few seconds later, the man swung at one of the girls protecting his wife, and so he and I got in a shoving match.  I remember screaming at him that you don't hit woman!  My colleague grabbed him by the throat to stop him.

All the while, no other Chinese man tried to stop him.  My colleague,once he had stopped the husband with the choke hold, went  to summon some Chinese male staff help.  The staff member who did come told us that the husband was on the phone asking his friends to come down with knives.  When the man calmed down, the Chinese management showed up, sat the husband down to talk to him.  Management then assured us that he would not come to the school again...

We have to watch our backs for the next little while.  This man has been said to be a gangster.

When a husband beats up his wife in public in China, no one will come to the woman's assistance.  That we did on Tuesday, must have struck the Chinese as strange.  The Chinese can be heartless when it comes to seeing strangers in trouble.  That the two female co-workers protected the wife yesterday was because they were friends, we were told. 

My wife told me that our attacking the man was a major loss of face for him.  REALLY?!?  As if being a wife-beater isn't loss of face enough!!  But, they don't think that way there.

I have been told that the law here says that you can only hit someone if they hit you.  So the woman who was hit by the man has the right to hit back; not I.

 In '89, the soldiers killing students shot at anyone who tried to aid the wounded.