American Teacher Attacked by Chinese Mob
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 04.23.08 | 2:49 PM ET
Very scary story out of China: A 22-year-old American volunteer teacher in the Hunan Province city of Zhuzhou was reportedly attacked by a mob outside the French grocery store chain Carrefour on Sunday. According to one account, attackers chanted “Kill him! Kill the Frenchman.” The AP reports that the man was “quickly whisked away by police and was not hurt.”
Chinese nationalists angered by anti-China protests in Paris during the Olympic torch run protested at the French Embassy in Beijing and at a number of Carrefour stores around China, the AP reports. Also troubling: Shanghaiist notes that “Our foreign correspondent friends in Shanghai and Beijing have been receiving death threats on their mobile phones and through their faxes ...”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
John M. Edwards 04.23.08 | 4:21 PM ET
Hi Jim:
That is troubling when a protest in Paris translates into direct action by mob violence abroad.
I used to live in Paris, and almost every day the French rally in the streets and protest. It’s actually a freer country than the US.
Over there I could say anything I wanted; over here I’ve had some problems: apparently I was 911ed for things I was saying in public.
Like the symbolic date of the terrorist attacks on the US, September 11 (or 9/11), 911 has become the most dangerous tool of revenge in this country’s history.
I’m still smarting.
Gary 04.23.08 | 8:04 PM ET
Any word on if they are changing the name to Repression Fries?
HS 04.23.08 | 11:38 PM ET
I was in China last summer, and the social atmosphere wasn’t so good. There’s a lot of simmering anger in Chinese society that you can sense. This incident shows just how underdeveloped China still is mentally, whatever modern infrastructure it has imported from the west. That an American who volunteered to teach in China—something few Chinese would do if paid—was taken as a Frenchman for going to a Carrefour, and that Chinese would beat someone because of anti-Chinese protests in his supposed country, is, well, pretty dumb. America was never quite that dumb, even in the dark years of the 1950s!
Ling 04.24.08 | 8:29 AM ET
Sometimes the powers that be allow limited protests, just so they can put the country being protested against on notice, and also allow for a little release of pressure within China. You shouldn’t be taking all this as some kind of fault or ignorance on the part of the people there. Its just politics.
keith 04.25.08 | 8:39 AM ET
The really scary story is how fast lies spread on the net. The guy in question just annouced he wasn’t attacked by a mob. No doubt the truth will be lost and the lies will propagate.
http://shanghaiist.com/2008/04/24/volunteer_in_ch.php