Foreigner Slapped & Spat On Chinese Woman, Angers Crowd

The most popular copies of the following video has nearly 1m on popular Chinese video sharing website Youku along with over 10k comments spanning 300 pages…

From Youku:

Laowai insulting Chinese woman on the street incites crowd’s anger

Yesterday afternoon around 6pm, a laowai riding in a BYD and a Chinese woman riding an electric scooter had a traffic dispute. The laowai claims the woman hit his car and slapped the woman twice on the spot and spat on her, inciting the resentment of city residents…!

Most of the beginning of the video are members of the crowd explaining what happened and expressing anger as well as identifying the foreigner in the car as having a piece of paper with Walmart written on it in his shirt pocket possibly indicating that he works for the American company.

At 2:00, a fat man says the ordinary common people would not be happy with the foreigner driving away whereas if he were to be towed away, it would feel like a victory to them.

At 3:00 in the video, the foreigner is transferred into a police truck which promptly drives away. The upset crowd then calls to trash his car. The crowd cheers when one of the car doors is dented while police then try to keep the crowd away from the vehicle. The rear windshield is also revealed to have been shattered.

A police officer off-camera asks the crowd to leave and trust that the matter will be handled by them. A woman in a green-blue shirt in the crowd asks the police if the foreigner could make an apology online. A police officer in a grey shirt assures them that he will handle this properly. The woman begins crying asking: “Why must us Chinese be like this? Why is it like this? We demand that he must make an apology, make an apology on the internet, he must. Why did he spit on us Chinese people? Why? Apologize. He must apologize to Chinese people.”

Finally, the officer in gray says: “Listen, this matter, I’ll take it back [to the police station], I will deal with it properly, and if it isn’t handled properly, I’ll quit. I promise everyone, don’t worry.” The crowd claps and disperses having received such an assurance.

Comments from Youku:

冬天里皓雪:

Just what actually happened is something we have no way of know, all we see are those blindly shouting. I’m against men hitting women, but I’m of course also against locals bullying wai di ren, and even more opposed to our country men bullying foreigners. Why can’t people just get along with other people? When we don’t know what the truth of the situation is, don’t blindly follow others in shouting. Everyone has their moments when they are in a foreign place. Just what exactly happened?

日月更迭:

I personally feel if the police were to take his side/cover up for him, it will actually end up hurting all the foreigners in China including him, because the next time this kind of thing happens, the ordinary common people will no longer believe the police, and will simply immediately cause the situation to get out of control. So, I hope the police will treat this seriously and fairly, justly, and publicly handle this matter.

RyanYy_0001:

The trouble mainly lies in the police handling of matters involving foreign nationals never once being fair and impartial, whereas they’re always happy to immediately find a bicycle within hours or sift through garbage.

[Note: This comment refers to two notable instances that occurred earlier this year. The first involved Wuhan police quickly finding a lost bicycle for a Japanese national. The second involved Ningbo police sifting through tons of garbage to find a Russian national’s passport that was mistakenly thrown away. Instances like these have made many Chinese people resentful about what they feel is preferential treatment for foreigners.]

水草玻璃猪:

Based on my observations, Chinese people abroad are all very cautious and prudent when it comes to fights and arguments, afraid of being deported. However, for Western trash to be so arrogant on Chinese territory, just who gave them the nerve??? If this garbage isn’t deported, then this entire matter will have been as if nothing was done at all. This kind of Westerner that thinks of themselves as being a higher level of person should be killed while he’s in China, but instead he’s let go completely intact. This poor woman. I support prosecuting/suing him, human flesh search [him]!

kiki139:

Let me tell you guys, that laowai is a high level manager of Walmart, who has come to China so many years. He does have a nice car abroad. This BYD is only a means of transportation for him here. Provided by the company. Walmart is so niu. Too niu. These past two years, Walmart supermarket scandals have been frequent. Either its expired food products or pricing fraud, or selling ordinary pork for over 100 [RMB] per half kilogram. Yet these kind of things don’t happen with this niu company in other countries.

蔡晓驰:

Whenever our own countrymen are bullied, I see that it isn’t everyone who is indignant, and that there are many people who even speak in defense of foreigners, thinking Chinese people must’ve been wrong somewhere, how Chinese people’s character’s are so low/poor. No matter what, he becoming physical is a fact, right? Him, a large man, striking a woman like this, do you guys think this is right? Also, those saying the crowd shouldn’t be using dirty language, yes, using coarse language is not good, but when you’re angry, I simply refuse to believe you don’t want to utter a few curse words!

DJ韩涛:

Henan people, gei li! This matter requires netizens to remember two faces, one is that arrogant foreigner’s face; the other is the face of the person in charge who promised that the matter would be fairly dealt with. All people pay attention to what the final result of this matter is.

龙爷K死你:

I as a Zhengzhou person would not believe the police! Zhengzhou has finally persuaded Walmart to invest there, you know what that means!

海阔天空屋:

How did this dispute specifically happen? Whose mistake was it? It’s not in the video! But based on what I know, Zhengzhou’s electric scooters are also a mess, driving around everywhere on the roads, not observing traffic rules, with accidents happening again and again. There are explicit laws that say electric scooters are motor vehicles but in practice they’re still treated as non-motor vehicles… very troublesome, very thorny… but no matter what, this laowai hitting someone is wrong, and he doesn’t even stop to consider whose country he’s in!

雪子_2092:

Our countrymen are still too honest/naive, still afraid of foreigners. China’s ordinary common people are oppressed by useless officials and regarded as inferior by foreigners. Should’ve just smashed the car and dragged him out! Be polite with polite people, but with this kind of beast, force must be used against force. If you’re too polite to him, he’ll just look down on you and only be defending yourself will he respect you! Must be an American, a Walmart tag is even hanging on his clothes!

瓤茬儿:

When can this be dealt with as an normal incident? When can it not be emphasized that this is foreigners bullying Chinese? When can we look at the matter from the perspective of simple right or wrong? I didn’t see what happened, so I have doubts, and I won’t simply escalate this to national hate just because the other person is a foreigner, making it about the Eight-Nation Alliance and the humiliation of the Manchurian Qing Dynasty, much less go smash a car. When I think about it, this is rather disappointing~

dabao137066:

The laowai around Bruce Lee only began respecting him after he taught them a lesson. According to what some SBs say about “winning people with virtue/overcoming people with kindness”, especially for those Americans who have grown up in a culture of violence, you trying to reason with him about right and wrong will just result in them regarding you as weak. Do you know why the Japanese respect the Americans? Was it not because they were beaten into fear? In the video, the American struck first, and he hit a woman. According to what some SB’s say, should we invite the American home for a meal and then tell him what he did was bad, and that this is a civilized country…

快乐DEswallow:

Last time in Chengdu, an intersection was so jammed that a 120 [ambulance] carrying a patient was trapped. At the time, it was the afternoon rush hour and there weren’t any traffic police but a bicycling threw down his bike and began directing traffic at the intersection to create an opening, using body language and hand signs when he couldn’t communicate verbally, ultimately with the ambulance escaping the jam under his help. There are good and bad everyone. I hope the country can improve its laws involving foreigners, and restrict [screen] the laowai in China.

[Note: This comment is referring to a well-known incident earlier this year mentioned in a translated comment in this post and seen in this video.]

阿美妹、:

Actually, our Chinese citizens are not that uncivilized. At the time, had that foreigner just bravely came out of the car and calmly apologized to that woman and apologized to the people, I trust our countrymen would definitely not have physically attacked him or insulted him. It’s just that foreigner doesn’t understand our people, thinking everyone is very impulsive when actually we just wanted him to say sorry and it would’ve been enough.

BH4CAT:

Asking for an apology is not wrong, but smashing windows and kicking the car door is definitely wrong, and doing this only shows the low/poor characters of our country’s citizens. In the video there is someone who keeps instigating people to overturn the car. Is his motivation truly to get justice for the woman that was hit? I don’t think so, taking advantage of the opportunity to vent is probably more likely than demanding justice for her, and the minority of people who end up participating in smashing the car have the same attitude! Reasonable demands that depend on extreme behavior will never be successfully realized.

What do you think? Are Chinese people justified in believing foreigners receive preferential treatment from the authorities? Do you agree with their reaction to this incident? Their anger? Their behavior? Do you trust the police will handle this matter properly?