This is anecdotal evidence, but I think there is something more to it. There is a bully mentality that is pervasive in modern China, and it manifests itself in some very unpleasant ways. There seems to be a lot of pent up anger, even though people’s lives are ostensibly so much better than a generation ago.

Six years ago when I was living out in Chengdu I saw a particularly nasty and vicious fight. It happened while I was playing basketball on the university’s outdoor courts with some of my students. As we were playing I heard a cheer go up and people rushing to the far corner court. As I wonder over I could see that four boys were beating up another who was lying helpless on the ground, as a huge crowd watched and did nothing. Even after it was clear that he could not fight back, they kicked his huddled heap on the ground. Blood poured on the court as I helplessly watched.

I was a teacher, and supposedly in a position of authority, but as a foreigner in an inland province, I knew I had to be careful. There is a mob mentality in China, and if people decided the outsider was getting involved in something that didn’t concern him, it was difficult to know how the crowd–which had swelled to several hundred–might react. I walked away disgusted and ashamed.

Shortly after the incident I saw something even more pathetic. As I walked down a back street in Chengdu a man in his late 30s or early 40s was yelling loudly, swearing frequently. The crowd had already formed, and as I pushed my way up to the front, I realized the objects of his wrath were two elderly women with cigarette carts. It wasn’t clear what had stirred his rage, but he kept pushing one of the carts as the women struggled to hold on to it. Finally he flipped it over spilling the contents across the ground. And as he went after the second, he pushed one of the women hard, knocked her down.

The scene seemed particularly shocking to me since people cannot stop telling me how much Chinese defer to their elders, yet no one was even trying to reason with the man. If the scene at the school had the potential to turn ugly for me, this would have been far riskier for me to involve myself. On the courts several of my students were around, and it was fairly clear I was a teacher. It is reasonable to think that people would have been somewhat reluctant to turn on me. However, this time I was on my own, with the laobaixing. These were common men, and I knew that in Sichuan that meant conservative people who might harbor resentment to foreigners. It was less than three years after the US bombed the Chinese Embassy, and I had heard from friends about how quickly situations could turn if national pride entered the equation. This was the land of the common man, and I was anything but.

You often hear about what loabaixing think or do, as if they are some sort of homogeneous group. People tend to translate laibaixing to mean ‘old hundred names,’ but I always think of it as ‘hundred common names.’ Lao is literally ‘old,’ but often implies frequency or banality. Traditionally there were only 100 surnames that Chinese could have (although that’s greatly expanded), and I think the idea of the average man is better reflected the way I think about the phrase.

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. People here are brave in numbers, and there is rarely honor in taking the high road. In Sichuan locals would tell me that the people in the province had hot tempers that matched the cuisine. At the time I believed them, but I’m not sure if that’s true. I’ve seen a hot-tempered bully mentality in other cities throughout the country. Of course this is not the rule, and is surely not even the majority, but the frequency is nonetheless alarming

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. So why do Chinese arguments have a tendency to escalate, and the targets of anger so often are the weak?

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.