Your Mom Stops Traffic in Xian
From ChinaSmack:
Yesterday afternoon around 3 o’clock, while this journalist drove towards the North Street and Xihuamen intersection, suddenly appeared ahead a middle-aged woman around 40-years-old walking amongst traffic, “collecting toll” from all of the cars passing through this street, skillfully knocking on the driver’s side windows of every car, then demanding fees from the driver, and the drivers all helplessly and more or less paying the toll.
Perhaps it was because yesterday’s temperature was too high (note: at the time, this journalist’s in-car thermometer showed 45 degrees Celsius), this female toll collector had a towel on her head and her upper body indeed was only wearing a white bra.
User Comments
fructoric
06/23/10
At first I asked myself “what am I missing here?”
Then I remembered, “oh yeah, it’s China.”
Charlotte
06/23/10
Hope she got away before the police arrested her. Or if they even cared.
lee
06/23/10
I”m going to Xi”an next week.
fructoric
06/23/10
I have seen this kind of thing before. I have never seen police do anything to solve these kinds of problems in third world. They usually prevent them from being solved, or defend someone’s “right” to hold you up on the road. I have no empathy for this lady were she to be shown what a road is for and be run over.
Anderson
06/23/10
I think she probably has some sort of mental problems. I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt her for it, police included.
fructoric
06/23/10
Well, in my experience, most people, including armed police, avoid resolution to the problem peacefully or even protect the subjects. Isn’t that what we (and other young children) are taught at school? No peaceful conflict resolution. Only the authority is allowed to solve the problem how they see fit, and they want the chaos and infighting (diversion from the real transgressor).
After dealing with people in the streets and seeing how violent and political they really are, first hand, face to face, I do not care what happens to their lives.
Rob
06/23/10
The police won’t give much of a damn. They’re just going to hate the hassle of having to leave their air conditioned hut. Imagine two scrawny cops standing there scratching their heads trying to figure out how they’re going to resolve this. That’s cops in China. For police brutality, see: LA, Ca.
fructoric
06/23/10
I agree the police have few consistent, positive incentives, regardless of where they are.
My succinctly put: I perceive authorities as protectors and enablers of such feral animals such as this “woman.”