It’s a reasonable analysis, but parts of it don’t really contradict what I said. It’s a bully mentality. Bullies back down in a fair fight, so it’s not surprising they didn’t fight you.

There is an eagerness to fight–when the odds are in a ‘tough’ guy’s favor. I’ve seen more guys being ‘held back’ from fights than actually fighting. But that tends to be when a guy is afraid someone might actually fight back.

It’s really good that you stepped in to fights, and I hope that your actions prevented further harm. Just be careful about what this means about your ‘fibre.’

Firstly, I would appreciate your defining the “common man.” Also, I have problems with
“bully mentality” being “pervasive” in China. My experiences indicate otherwise: Yes, whenever violence rears its ugly head, few if any, Chinese will voluntarily insert himself in harms way (is this not a common human trait?). This is, I believe, due to a lifetime of conditioning by the government to maintain order among several hundred millions of mostly illiterate people. The Chinese are taught to “get along” with one another and to not cause trouble. Can you, or I, begin to imagine a society of such massive size violently venting its rage?

“The common man in China is surprisingly mad, and I don’t know why. The stories that I told were only four, but I’ve seen similar, if less violent, situations frequently.”

What you have described here is “herd mentality” and it is a condition that afflicts every society. Violence will attract a crowd in any society. Violence, and the viewing of violence, are pleasurable! Violence ranks right up there with sex and food as the most pleasurable aspects of life. It’s a sad fact.

“Many Chinese think of America as a violent place, and it is in some respects. Perhaps if more people had guns in China people would think more before getting into a fist fight. However, that logic seems thin. I’ve seen lots of people get into arguments on the NYC subway, and I can’t remember a single incident when more than one punch was thrown, and I don’t think this restraint reflected a fear that the someone might be armed.”

Josh, America “IS” a violent place. America may be the “MOST” violent society on the planet. Guns are not the answer to solving SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Addressing your assertion that few fights escalate beyond one punch – you are correct. The reason is: this “ain’t” Hollywood! The guy that throws the first punch is more likely than not the winner. It’s that simple.

In my personal experiences here in Southwest China, I have taken a more hands on approach, if you will. On more than one occasion where there was violence toward women I have intervened and walked away without a punch being thrown. However, there may have been a down side to my action; in my haste to help these women, I may have unintentionally increased the severity of their beating after I left the scene. Intervention is not an option that I would not recommend to everyone but it is part of my fibre. I could not stand by and watch the physical abuse. Perhaps I have been lucky. I may not be lucky the next time.

At the time of occurrence, you analyzed your position and determined that the better course would be not to introduce yourself into the fray. A decision that cannot now be altered regardless the amount of reflection. You did what you thought was right at the time. Let it go.

“Is it something in the culture, or does the eagerness to fight reflect an anger in society–a deep bitterness looking for a channel to escape? I’m tempted to draw a conclusion about resentment about openness, or freedom, but just because the explanation somehow makes sense to me, doesn’t mean it’s grounded in reality. Maybe I’m drawing conclusions from nothing.”

I have found nothing in this society that indicates an “eagerness to fight”, in fact, contrarily.

But I don’t think he understood any of that, and probably remained angry he had “lost face” by not being permitted to be first in the queue ahead of a pregnant woman the rest of the day. On such trivialities Chinese men lose face and it upsets them. Which is why they also never give way when driving cars, even when it makes patently good road traffic sense to do so. They’d rather sit there for 30 minutes having created a traffic backlog than give way to someone else and lose face.

“Is China a violent country? Not individually, in fact the average Chinese person is far less likely to do violence against a stranger than his or her British counterpart.”

There have been studies regarding types of violence and ethnic groups. For example, whites are more prone to one on one violence, sometimes at unspeakable levels and the fact that most of the world’s serial killers, and the most prolific ones, tend to be white. Blacks tend more to group on group violence, forgot what was said about Latinos. What’s the word on violence in other N. Asian countries? S. Asian?

Still and all, being on the receiving end of it (through no fault of my own) is quite a different experience. All the small-scale xenophobia you seem to spend all your time dealing with in China suddenly wells up, and you discover that there are people in China who genuinely hate foreigners, as well as others who are willing to go along with the crowd.

Is China a violent country? Not individually, in fact the average Chinese person is far less likely to do violence against a stranger than his or her British counterpart. However, once a crowd gathers a kind of mob mentality takes over, but this happens only very rarely, and one doesn’t have to be Chinese to see a certain kind of justice in a streetfull of people whaling on someone caught pick-pocketing.