China’s urban bylaw enforcement officers, known in Mandarin by the abbreviation “chengguan,” are notorious for their violent behavior, especially when it comes to dealing with the urban poor. They commonly menace, beat, and sometimes kill street vendors suspected of violating municipal regulations.
When a horde of secondary school students from the Zhaoyang District No. 1 Secondary School flooded the streets to defend an elderly female peddler selling bananas, the chengguan found the tables turned on them.
Witnesses at the scene, which took place in the mountainous southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan took photos and uploaded them to Chinese social media sites such as Sina Weibo. One caption describes the scene:
“Chengguan of Zhaoyang District bully defenseless grandmother, smashing her tricycle and bananas before the school campus. Attempt to beat the senior citizen foiled by encirclement by almost 1000 students.”
