The incident occurred at a grill restaurant in the city of Tangshan in the province of Hebei in northern China and became known on Friday. The moving images from a surveillance camera inside the restaurant spread quickly and have been seen by tens of millions of Chinese.
The video shows a man in green approaching a woman dressed in white at a table where she is sitting with some friends. He puts his hand on her back. She keeps him away and says: what is your problem?
The man then tries to touch the woman’s face. She pushes him back and urges him to stay away. Then he hits her in the face.
It is the beginning of a wild riot where the woman is pulled away by the hair – and which continues outside on the street. There, a group of men, eating at a table, jump into the beating, which then also targets the woman’s friends. The men throw themselves at them with chairs and beer bottles as shelter. They jump on them and shout to kill her, writes the Financial Times.
Two of the women were taken to hospital with injuries, which were not reported to be life-threatening. While the other two sustained minor injuries.
Police have arrested nine people.
The attack on the restaurant on Saturday was by far the most discussed topic on Chinese Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.
The general anger after the attack is also reported to have been based on the fact that the police took a long time to react.
“All this could have happened to me, could have happened to all of us,” was a comment that received over a hundred thousand approvals.
“How can this still happen in 2022,” wrote another user – referring to the widespread abuse of women that has traditionally occurred in China.
Outside a large electronics store, while living in Beijing, I witnessed a man trying to abuse his girlfriend. It happened in the middle of the day in front of people passing by. He held her and screamed. It went on for several minutes and no one intervened – before we were a couple who chased him away.
Abuse of women has traditionally been considered an internal matter in the family. But can also be strikingly open.
Lately has a series of events aroused feelings of inequality that still prevail in China. Last winter, a video was spread of a woman who was found chained in a cold outhouse in rural eastern China.
The revelation led on social media to anger against the authorities’ failure to overcome the abuse of women and trafficking.
Before that, it was tennis star Peng Shuai’s alarm that shook China. She accused former Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli of sexually abusing her. Never before has such a high-ranking politician in the Chinese Communist Party been accused of such a thing.
Peng Shaui later withdrew the accusation and disappeared from the public eye – but that she did so of her own free will was questioned by the outside world. And the event gave a different picture than the one of improved equality for women that the Communist Party wants to show.
In China, domestic violence was banned by law only in 2016.
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