Dongguan Punch-ups
September 12th, 2007 | by This is China! |“I hate Dongguan,” a Dutch drinking buddy in Suzhou told me a couple days ago. He had been in the Guangdong Province city for ten days, visiting suppliers. “It’s so boring,” he continued. “I went during the day to visit suppliers, then returned to the hotel. My main supplier, who is from the area, told me not to go out alone. He said if I wanted to go out, we would have to go out together. He also said there are places even he would not go in the city.” We were at Blue Marlin 3, in the Suzhou Industrial Park, just the two of us after work, waiting for the other pub crowd to join in after work.
Now my Dutch friend is no little guy. At more than six foot tall, about two hundred pounds, he stands head and shoulders above most in a crowd – especially in China. But it was precisely BECAUSE he is a Westerner his supplier warned him not to go out without a Chinese buddy.
He continued, “Even in the hotel those people are crazy. We were in the hotel dining room – this is a five-star Chinese hotel – and there were all these huge families gathered round large tables. After a while some of the men had drunk too much and started shouting at each other. They grabbed each other and began pushing and shoving. Children were running around the restaurant screeching, and small babies were crawling on the floor. One of the babies shit on floor,” he said incredulously. “One of the staff just came by and cleaned it up, no big deal.”
“Another night we were in the lobby of the same hotel. Some Chinese people came down from singing karaoke. There had been a fight in one of the rooms. A guy came down the stairs first: the pocket of his shirt was torn. Just behind him there was a woman; the sleeve of her dress was ripped. The others behind them didn’t seem much better off.”
Though I’d been to Dongguan just a few months before, I hadn’t felt or experienced the same degree of menace my Dutch buddy had. “Maybe the American guy I was with down there new where it was safe to visit, and where to avoid. He’s lived down there for some time now, and loves it,” I said meekly.
“I don’t know,” the Dutchman said, and shook his head, “those people down there are just too crazy.”
Bill Dodson
SUZHOU, China
2 Responses to “Dongguan Punch-ups”
By Mark Forman on Sep 13, 2007 | Reply
I’d say that there is much nouveau riche syndrome in Dongguan where most locals have nice stipend and don’t need to work. Why I don’t like it there is because the extremes of high-end new glitz and crude factory parks exist so close to each other. Also a lot of Hong Kong influence in the mix there too. So kind of messy but more and more western restaurants and pubs.
By Bill on Sep 13, 2007 | Reply
Mark;
I actually had a very nice visit to Dongguan recently; though, admittedly, a buddy took me to the nice bits and himself knows a lot of locals (he also speaks Chinese well enough to be charming). However, the factory areas outside the city-proper are atrocious. I also had lunch in a restaurant in the “outlands” and felt lucky afterward I didn’t come down with some intenstinal thing-a-ma-jiggy.
I agree with you on the Hong Kong factor: I think the Mainland Chinese government let the Hong Kong companies get away with “murder” down there in terms of the degree of corruption, prostitution and pollution one finds in the area. The Taiwanese also exploit the area for the environment, the workers and the lack of law enforcement.