Teenage Mutant Chinese-Internet-Café Ninja
January 21st, 2008 | by This is China! |
One night I was watching Nanjing local television news coverage. This poor bloke on-screen could hardly walk down the sidewalk as the reporter’s camera trailed him. His face was puffy, one of his eyes swelled raspberry red. He held his lower back, crooked like an old man who had for decades carried great baskets of bricks on his shoulders.
It seemed he had been merely beaten. Severely. Just outside an Internet Café. Minding his own business. He was buying a pack of cigarettes when some toughs just out of the next door café came into the garage-sized shop, still pumped from the adrenaline of having capped scores of flesh-eating mutants. The hapless victim was, simply put, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Later in the coverage the reporter showed video tape of what had happened in the Internet Café just before the beating outside. A short, wiry young man brandishing a blade about the length of a butter knife threatened the Café manager on duty. It’s not clear – as there was no sound to the video – if the punk wanted money or just wanted to show how big his knife was. The tough cuffed the manager on the side of the face, then smashed the computer monitor on the manager’s counter with a swipe of his hand. Still not satisfied the computer monitor had learned its lesson, he tore the screen from its cables and threw it to the floor. Then he ran away.
By sheer coincidence I had just been reading an interview with Brian Lee, vice president of the venture capital firm United Capital Investment, in the January 2007 issue of the China Economic Review. UCI is building an Internet Café brand along the same lines as the McDonald’s franchise, called BigCafe. The intention is to offer customers an environment that is safe, comfortable and fun. Problem is, most internet cafes in China are not safe, comfortable and fun. According to a friend of mine, Jill, a Nanjing native, most Chinese internet cafes are dangerous, cold and veritable dens of iniquity. Hence, the Chinese government in March 2007 stopped providing city and township licenses to open the cafes. Instead, only the Beijing national government and provincial governments are allowed to approve openings.
Jill said, “One of the big problems with the cafes is that young people practically live in them. Many of these places have young people that are unhappy or even depressed with their lives. They don’t go to work. So they live online with made-up, happy families and dogs and jobs and forget about the outside world. Or they play the violent shoot-em-up games online with other people in the café. Sometimes they get into fights over what happened online.”
Lee cites in the CER article that he is well aware of the general state of internet cafes in China, which is why he believes UCI’s investment in the BigCafe franchise will work. “Many of these cafes concluded that going under the umbrella of a national branded chain like BigCafe – with its own national license and a good relationship with the government – while still maintaining high margins, is the best route forward,” he said.
By law internet cafes are supposed to take patrons’ identification cards upon entry. But many owners, preferring income to legitimacy, allow onto the premises some of the most suspect characters and allow some of the most rude behavior. Jill told me she was once at a computer in a Suzhou internet café. Boys in their late teens were at a station next to hers. They were watching pornography online and hooting loudly, inviting her to look as well. She instead quickly finished her session and made for the exit. She complained to the manager on duty about the boys watching the porn. The manager merely shrugged.
The internet cafes are also magnets for local Chinese mafia gangs. Thefts of personal property abound and cheats of every sort ply the unsuspecting or the unconscious. The better run internet cafes actually have police on-duty at the door, frequently patrolling the café interior. Still, many parents – like Jill’s own several years ago – forbid their children to go to the places, fearing for the safety of their sons and daughters.
Myself, the last time I was in an internet café in China was some nine years ago, when I first came to China. At that time, the experience was harmless enough, though haunts I went to in Beijing and Shanghai were grimy. Now, though, when I peer into the entrance of an internet café, no matter the city, no matter how desperate I might be to check my email online, I always continue on my way. No telling what mutants may await me cyberspace.
Bill Dodson
SUZHOU, China
