Over the past two days, everybody on Chinese social media is talking about an incident that happened at a BBQ restaurant in Tangshan, a prefecture-level city in the northeast of Hebei province.
A surveillance video from the BBQ restaurant captured the incident that happened at 2:40 on June 10th. Security footage from inside the restaurant shows how three female customers are dining when a male customer walks by and touches the back of one of the women (dressed in white).
The incident starts when the man in the green jacket approaches the women and tries to touch the woman dressed in white.
The woman pushes his arm away and raises her voice at him. When he tries to grab her again, she slaps away his hand, after which the man hits the woman in the face.
The woman fights the man off, but he hits her and the situation escalates immediately.
Within a matter of seconds, the incident leads to an outburst of violence. When the woman stands up to fight back against the man, her friend (dressed in black) stands up and smashes a beer bottle on the man’s head. She is immediately pulled away by the man, who is now joined by two other male customers.
While the girl dressed in black is beaten, her friend (dressed in gray) is coming to help her. One of the men violently throws a chair towards them and she is also being kicked. Meanwhile, the woman in white gets beaten again by the man who first touched her.
The two women on the right are also being attacked while the man in green again assaults the woman dressed in white on the left.
Another man also joins in the violent attack and drags the woman out of the restaurant by her hair. A man dressed in red comes up and suddenly smashes a beer bottle on the woman’s head.
The rest of the security footage was captured outside the Tangshan restaurant, where the brutal attack on the woman continued. The man in the green jacket violently kicks her in the head and others join in.
When another woman dining at the restaurant tries to pull the men away from her, she is also beaten to the ground and hits her head on the steps. The girl in gray comes to help up and is also beaten while doing so.
The woman is dragged out of the restaurant by her hair and is then kicked and attacked by three men. The woman on the left (in a white t-shirt) tries to pull the men away, but she is also beaten to the ground.
For just a brief moment, the situation seems to calm down as two of the women are lying on the ground after the violent attack, the men standing around.
While the two women lie motionless on the pavement, the men stand around.
Unfortunately, the scene continues to escalate within seconds as the women are trying to get back up. When the man in the green jacket grabs a bottle to hit the woman he initially assaulted, a man (red hat) intervenes. But the assault continues.
The woman is kicked in the head, beaten, and repeatedly dragged by her hair. She is attacked by at least three of the men. When a third woman tries to stop one of the men, she is beaten in the head by a man who seems to be her own partner (he stops and hugs her immediately after).
Everyone is talking about an outburst of violence against female customers at a Tangshan BBQ restaurant that happened on Friday morning. This moment shows how one of the guys involved smashes this woman, only realizing moments later it is his own partner. pic.twitter.com/RC8C76Oin5
— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) June 11, 2022
The scene is incredibly messy, with some five men standing around the woman and violently attacking her. The same man who just seemed to protect her (red hat) now also joins in and another beer bottle is smashed on her body or head. The other women helplessly stand around.
While the attack continues, one of the men convinces the others to leave (“Let’s go, let’s go!”). The men then leave the woman on the street and take off.
The woman is left on the street as the group of men takes off.
Later, photos showing the main victim of the brutal attack in a hospital bed soon surfaced on social media.
The outrageous level of violence displayed in the attack sent shockwaves across social media on Friday and Saturday. On Weibo, several hashtags on the Tangshan incident went trending, some hashtags attracting over a billion views.
The incident is triggering different discussions. Some relate to the apparent slow police response to the altercation and the time it took for the men to be arrested. Netizens commented that China’s surveillance system is seemingly faster to detect one case of Covid and track down a patient’s last whereabouts than it is to track down nine men involved in such a crime.
Other discussions relate to violence against women and how the media responds to it, as some Chinese media sources described how the first woman “rejecting” the man set off the altercation. Many people also felt the media reports were downplaying the incident.
People are angry about how Chinese media described the incident and how it started by the woman “rejecting” the man.
On Weibo, the Communist Youth League used a smiling emoji when posting about the incident, also sparking outrage online. Although the emoticon was later edited out and comments were censored, netizens reposted the emoji and wondered why the Communist Youth League wanted to be sarcastic or funny about such a display of violence.
Netizens are angry about the Communist Youth League using a smiley in a post relating to the Tangshan incident.
There are then also discussions zooming in on bystander responses to the attack, and about whether or not others should have stepped in.
These are similar discussions to when an assault on a woman happened in Beijing in 2016, without anyone stepping in (read here).
By Saturday afternoon (local time), all of the nine men involved in the incident were arrested. Some of them had already fled to Jiangsu province.
In response to photos of the arrest of one of the men, a meme came up on social media warning people to stay away from men dressed like him.
Meanwhile, the case is still trending on Chinese social media. Gender, misogyny, bystander effect, morality, gang violence, rule of law, public security, and media bias are all themes that come up in online discussions. There are also those who are happy about the fact that the entire incident was captured by surveillance cameras, because otherwise the severity of the incident might have never come out.
On Saturday, Global Times reported that two female victims had been sent to the hospital for treatment and are now in stable condition. Two other women suffered minor injuries and were not hospitalized.
We will report more on this story later on. Also see some of our other stories related to women and gender issues in China here.
By Manya Koetse and Miranda Barnes
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