By Kaiser Kuo and Jerry Chan

This is part two of an old series dug out from the dot com graveyard. Kaiser's personal weblog is here

Friday night, late: It must have been just after 1:30 and I was already done drinking for the night.

Friday night, late: It must have been just after 1:30 and I was already done drinking for the night. There had been a show at the Live House 17, a stifling, shoebox-sized sweat lodge on the Sanlitun South Bar Street. The Anarchy Jerks spewed their brand of punkish angst for an appreciative crowd of body-pierced miscreants. I saw only two other people in the crowd with black hair; we were even outnumbered by the green haired contingent.
I met up with some friends at The Loft for a bit, but I didn't feel like dancing and bailed after a couple of beers. I didn't feel like going home yet, so I walked past my place, and found myself wandering down to the 24 Hour Store at the north end of the Bar Street for a fix of Bud's Ice Cream.
As I passed one of the many darkened hutongs on the way to the store, I heard a sudden flurry of scampering feet followed by a series of loud grunts, squeals, and cursing. Peering down into the far end of the alley, silhouetted against a bare bulb in a doorway I saw a mass of scampering shadows coming towards me. As the mob moved closer, I saw a group of flower girls being chased down and beaten by three very angry panhandlers. Like a violent movie scene, this shocking spectacle was as disturbing as it was surreal. Some innate sense of morbid curiosity kept me there rooted to the spot. I stood and stared transfixed as this mini-drama unfolded before my eyes. It was all happening so fast, I could barely process what was happening in my mind, let alone move.
"WAP!" The sound of fist on flesh reverberated clearly in the night as one of the beggars caught hold of a girl that couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen. "WAP! WAP!" The blows rained down with all the strength the beggar could muster. The terrified girl responded with a string of obscenities as she squirmed about trying to escape the enraged beggar's clutches. An equally wizened old woman hovered nearby menacingly waving a cane in the air as she screamed at the child in a shrill banshee voice. Meanwhile the rest of the flower girls were dancing around the dueling duo intermittently taking swings at the old beggar and his partner, and desperately trying to pull the little girl out of harm's way. The frenzied melee careened from one side of the hutong to the other until the combatants suddenly realized they had drawn quite an audience - several sportin' girls, a handful of cab drivers, and me. While the violently disposed beggars were distracted, the flower girls managed to free their companion and scattered into the shadows, leaving the old and less fleet-footed codger and his wife screaming a trail of abuse after them.
On witnessing this freakish scene, I felt a mix of fascinated horror and shameful amusement, and I wondered whether life here had already stripped me of some of my compassion, numbed me somehow to the plight of the marginalized, the dispossessed. That old couple couldn't have been younger than 70 and those flower-sellers were still years shy of adolescence. I tried to imagine what could have caused the ruckus. Had the girls stolen money from the beggars? Was this the opening salvo of some kind of turf war? Was there really so little room to share on the bottom rung of the Beijing ladder?
The sportin' girls who work that section returned to their posts at curbside and stood around chatting with the cabbies. Some lanky International School kids in baggy pants were hanging out by the tables outside the 24 Hour Store. I bought my ice cream and trudged back home past the surly cab drivers, xiaojies, and half-conscious businessmen re-playing the scene in my head. The beggars and flower girls were nowhere in sight.
"Hallo! Lady bar?"
My thoughts were suddenly distracted by the familiar sound of those ever-present "xiaojie hustlers" trying to attract customers. Clutching my bag of melting ice cream, I shot the bored looking xiaojie an annoyed glare as I rounded the corner to my house.
Another night in Sanlitun. Business as usual.