Black and White Cat

There’s nothing new about the use of hypodermic needles to threaten and rob people. It happens all over the world. What is unusual is for an entire city like Urumqi to be gripped by fear, with hundreds of people claiming to have been stabbed, and rumors swirling about separatists deliberately spreading AIDS.

But this is not the first time panic over needle attacks has filled a city in China. In January 2002, shopping areas in Tianjin were deserted and people on the streets were in a state of constant vigilance. Everyone knew some version, or versions, of the rumor: that people with AIDS from Henan were taking revenge, either for being infected or for being abandoned by society. Then the rumors spread to Beijing. None of them were true.

Four people were arrested and convicted in Tianjin; three in Beijing. In Tianjin, two of the attackers had used syringes during a robbery. The others were completely unconnected and none of them had AIDS. In one of the Beijing cases, the man didn’t even use a syringe - he was just pricking people with an awl. It was never clear how this really started. All of the people convicted had heard the rumors and copied them.

The panic in Tianjin and Beijing in 2002 was remarkably similar to the situation now in Urumqi. While some people really had been threatened or pricked by needles, it seemed that many of those who flocked to the hospitals had not pricked by anyone. Their “attacks” were just a product of mass hysteria.

The difference between these cities is that Tianjin and Beijing were not already on a knife edge when the rumors began. Unlike Urumqi, no one was beaten to death and there were no protests demanding the resignation of city leaders.

Below, I’ve translated a Southern Weekly report from late January, 2002. It’s worth reading now because we are unlikely to see open reporting like this in Urumqi and because it highlights just how unreliable such rumors are. In one of the claims the paper investigated, people were able to give detailed descriptions about the pursuit and capture of a non-existent attacker. The “victim” did exist, but she had simply misinterpreted a previously unnoticed scratch on her hand.

The original Chinese, via Sina.com, is here. (See also: Snopes on various versions of this rumor around the world.)

Rumors that people are using AIDS-carrying syringes to prick city residents have created anxiety throughout Tianjin. Police in Tianjin have caught four suspects. Tianjin TV broadcast an expert’s explanation: the HIV virus dies a minute and a half after leaving the human body due to congealing of the blood and unless the HIV carrier draws the blood at the scene and immediately injects a large quantity into another person, it is extremely difficult to transmit the HIV virus with a needle.

Why were the rumors so ubiquitous? Because there was no authoritative mainstream voice. It is worth considering how to make use of emergency mechanisms when public security crises occur.

Tianjin’s “anxiety”

For the last two to three weeks, the streets of Tianjin have been unusually deserted and residents’ eyes are on the alert as they have never been before.

The pedestrian shopping streets of Binjiang Road and Heping Road have given the city’s busiest commercial district the name “Tianjin’s Wangfujing.” But the sprinkling of pedestrians make it seem that the name does not match reality. One person from Shandong who came to Tianjin on a business trip says, “If you just looked at the people walking in the streets, you wouldn’t believe this was a big city. It’s pretty much like the small county town back at home.”

The source of the widespread malaise in this huge city of nine million people is a rumor: that a group of people with AIDS from Henan have come to Tianjian and are taking revenge on society by randomly stabbing people with syringes loaded with HIV-infected blood in public places like shopping centers, supermarkets and on the street.

According to a local reporter, people say the rumor began on Christmas Eve when it’s said that a man was pricked in Binjiang Shopping Center. After New Year’s Day [Jan. 1], stories about needle-pricking spread further and further and the number of people pricked became greater and greater until the whole city was filled with anxiety.

Faced with the difficulty in judging whether the rumor was true or false, people chose to take an attitude of “better safe than sorry” and did their best to keep outside activities to a minimum. (Continued)

I originally planned to post this months ago, but other things got in the way and I forgot all about it.

It was just after 11 o’clock one night in April and there was nothing happening at work so I popped out to the shop. I was just starting to cross the road near the Millennium Monument when a policeman leaned out of his car and waved me back. For a moment I assumed this was because the traffic light was red, but then I looked behind him at the source of a deep, heavy roaring sound. Four huge things that appeared to be tanks were rumbling down Fuxing Road heading east towards Tiananmen Square!

Each of them was almost completely covered with a big blue wooden box carrying the name 河北重汽集团 (something like Hebei Heavy Vehicle Group), and at the bottom of each box was a fringe of gold tassles. But the tank treads were still clearly visible behind this disguise.

Much more interesting than my planned trip to the shop, so I jumped into a taxi to follow them.

“Where to?”
“Tiananmen Square.” It seemed like a better thing to say than “follow those tanks!”
“What do you want to see in Tiananmen Square at this time of night?”
“I haven’t got the slightest idea, to be honest, and I’m probably not even going there.” And then I told him what I’d just seen. He laughed.

“They’re not tanks. It’s something to do with fixing the road.”

This didn’t seem like a very likely story to me, but I couldn’t think of any better explanation. As we chatted about the big weird things ahead of us, it became clear that he was just as fascinated and bemused as I was. The tank-things had now disappeared from view because we’d got caught by traffic lights and I decided it was time to go back to work.

He dropped me off at Xidan, but almost immediately I heard that big rumbling sound again. Somehow we’d managed to get in front of them without overtaking. At the head of the convoy was the police car, then the “things,” followed by a truck painted with military camouflage, various emergency vehicles and more police cars.

When I got home, I checked the internet and discovered that other people were also wondering what the hell these tanks in boxes were for. Apparently they were making the same journey at the same time every night.

I went out again on the following night, with a camera this time and just as I stepped outside I heard the noise. Damn, I’d missed them. So, taxi time again. We were luckier with the traffic than the night before and I saw them turn south onto the 2nd Ring Road. Once again I got off at Xidan and, as I’d now guessed, the mysterious tank-things doubled back and rejoined Chang’an Avenue behind me. The result of this night’s outing was the abysmal video above. Apologies for the crappy picture - my camera simply can’t handle this sort of thing at night, but that’s no excuse for my failure to use it properly.

So, what were they and what were they doing? It turned out they were testing the strength of the roads and the subways below. Each night all the underpasses were closed off and fitted with seismic equipment to measure the vibrations. And all of this was in preparation for reinforcement work so that when the real tanks eventually roll down this route for the 60th anniversary parade on October 1, they don’t all fall down a great big hole.

Here are couple of pictures a reporter took of the mock tanks when they stopped over a subway. The report was quickly deleted, but there are plenty of copies around (eg. this one).

Now, of course the real things are out on the roads of Beijing. I passed a huge convoy of tanks, trucks loaded with missiles and other trucks carrying barrels (what would they be for?) at about three o’clock this morning as I was bringing one my cats back home from the vet.

I haven’t got the slightest idea if Rem Koolhaas was or wasn’t thinking of genitalia when he designed the new CCTV building.

Likewise, no one has ever proved that church doors were built with the same thing in mind.

And I certainly wouldn’t dream of suggesting anything about the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the middle of Tiananmen Square.

Entrance to the Juyuan Hotel on Majiabao Road, Beijing

Last week’s edition of Southern Weekly (Aug. 6) carried an extraordinarily rare article on a subject that is usually off-limits for the mainstream media in China: the “black jails” that operate outside of the law in Beijing, detaining people who have committed no crime and have simply come to the capital to exercise their legal right to petition the central government. The report avoids the term “black jail” and does not discuss the widespread use of these illegal places of detention. Nevertheless, it gives a graphic account of life inside one of them.

The spark for this article was the rape of a girl from Anhui province in the middle of the night, six hours after she arrived, by one of the thugs employed by a Henan local official to guard the petitioners in storeroom in the Juyuan Hotel near Beijing South Station. (Continued)