entry: 5/25/13

I was at a restaurant and I saw a girl get slapped so hard her earrings splashed on the ground like someone emptied a bag of marbles. Instead of making sure she was ok, I was making sure no one tripped on the earring pieces. tf

One of the first things I noticed when I moved here was domestic violence wasn’t rare. Alarming the first time you see it. My first episode was my 2nd month here. I saw a lady getting choked out by her bf IN FRONT of a bouncer who was watching it all go down. We were driving by and I stopped the car, and showed my friends what was going on. They were hesitant, but I demanded they get him off her as he was mounted on top of her and choking her out with 2 hands. Needless to say, the guy  was upset. My boy is a 6ft 4 italian so it was funny to watch the guy try to swing on him in a drunken rage, but I was especially alarmed when the dude ran off into the night, only for him to come back with a metal pipe. Guess who threw themselves in front of him when my friend was about to bash his head in? The girl! wtf.  Its also not rare to hear various neighbors getting into scuffles in just about every apt complex I’ve lived in. You hear glasses break, yelling, fighting, and the cops are never called.

My theory is the lack of communication in relationships as the cause. Chinese have a save face culture. Talking it out is quite rare. I noticed that when something goes wrong, a simple sorry and ignore is the way to go, however we all know that if you’re pissed off……being quiet about it isn’t the way to squash beef. Talking it out is….so what happens is eventually…people explode. Luckily, the level of violence isn’t actually all that physically threatening, they’re not the biggest or most powerful of people. But still…..its quite crazy!