China - The Deep South.
On a visit to China, I went out drinking with family-in-law and friends, and friends of friends.

Some of the friends were from the shady side of life. Others were officials and senior law-enforcement figures in the region. There is far more than fifty shades of grey up there. The good guys and the bad guys have found a happy way to continue a polite (?) and happy existence, without infringing one another's requisite duties of their roles or resorting to corruption, but also co-operating to ensure stability.

That evening was meant to be the same as many others I have enjoyed: a good night out at a KTV (karaoke) lounge, but no one was singing, thankfully. Everyone was just smoking cigs, drinking, talking and playing drinking games. Everyone was happy and respectful and very cheerful.

We had rented a huge private room, but it didn't have a private toilet. We had to share a toilet with all the other rooms on that level of the building. That means about seventy people to one bowl. At three or so beers per hour per head? That's not a good thing.

Someone from another room was using that one shitter and taking far too long. One of the guests in our room, having queued for a while, decided to knock and kick on the door, very loudly, and reprimand the occupant for being in there for a very long time - and for causing a long and unhappy queue. After all, they had been in there for something north of twenty minutes. The inconsiderate local lass hurried herself up and headed back to her friends' KTV room.


Aaaand that's when the trouble started.


One of toilet-girl's friends, a guy in his early twenties, who obviously thought himself either important or invulnerable, decided to storm our room and tried to raise a ruckus. He exploded into a room of about thirty people and started yelling blue murder. At five foot nothing and about fifty kilos, he was either brave or foolhardy, or most likely liquored up.

My brother-in-law went to him, calmed him down politely and invited him to sit with him and have a drink. The offer could be seen as an apology. The boy sat, and a beer was opened for him by my BIL, honouring the 'guest'.

The lad took a swig, outwardly calm, but probably shitting bricks to be inside a place with known public figures on both sides of the law, some of them looking quite displeased.

BIL stood up, took the beer from him and poured it on his head. The look of shock on the outsider's face still sticks in my mind. The kid stood up, ever so quickly, dripping wet, from head to shoulders and chest.

My BIL then went off, yelling at him, in a way I have never seen him do. He is usually so calm and peaceful, logical, cool and quite unshakable. The invader's friends were at the door of the room, but didn't enter. They too looked shocked and babbled quietly.

At that moment, most of the men in our group stood in a menacing manner in support, myself included, fists clenched low, up on the balls of their feet and ready to rumble. Fucking with friends and family is not taken lightly in those parts. The moral code is very unobfuscated. The look on that young man's face was sheer terror, and filled with doubt that he might walk the five metres to the door of the room unmenaced, or at least without urgent medical requirements. At least a dozen men, most more than 170 tall and more than 80 kilos each, and all looking very displeased, would cause most sane people to question their earlier decision. That interloper considered his chances of immediate retaliation, wisely. Mostly.

The unfortunate guy, after being humbled so publicly, especially in front of his friends, walked to the door, beer-soaked, dampened, yet with some kind of dignity. At the door, he screamed out that he and his friends would find us all and do unspeakable things. He left.

Phones came out of pockets all over the room. The music stopped. Hurried calls were made and the local lads on our side of affairs were marshalled. It's not about fear derived from an inividual's words. It's discomfort that his many friends and relatives may have less of a love for life than someone else, especially when gathered in numbers.

The night at KTV, having been spoiled by foolishness on both sides of the argument, was over. It was decided we would go immediately to a late evening meal at a restaurant, walking distance from where we were. As we left, a group of the other guy's friends followed at a distance and shouted taunts.

Our reinforcements, having been phoned in, arrived in drips and drabs, scattered over a radius of a few blocks. As we walked further away, those interlopers inserted themselves into the gap between ourselves and those who raised threats. The threateners dispersed along the way.

We arrived at the restaurant. It was a shabby affair with a cracked concrete courtyard that looked to have once been a service station, and many private rooms off small corridors, leading to his'n'hers bathrooms that would scare even the most ardent scat, klisma and urolagnia fans...

Our back-ups on the streets slinked off to hawker stalls and dai pai dongs, in wait, leaving a few cockatoos on the corners, while we all enjoyed our repast.

Someone asked for the large private room for the twenty or so who came to dinner. A wiser and older mind, the local fire chief, prevailed. He ordered the big table to be dragged into that courtyard at the front of the building. His reasoning was so that we could eat in the open air and show defiance to the threats. It was done.

There was still tension in the air. As the only gwailo in town, apparently I had a bullseye on my face. BIL made sure I had company when I needed a slash - one or two of his cohorts blocked the doors when I had to go. Considerate. I would have been happier if he had ordered a respirator or gas mask... or a couple of litres of bleach so I could clean the joint!


We ate an enormous meal, sank much more Tsingtao and some local hooch, and ended the evening nicely. The food was excellent - fresh and tasty - and not an endangered species in sight on the menu or the table. That's another story.


tl;dr local and imported pissheads avoid needless violence over mutually inconsiderate behaviour. Apols for length.
(EffinNitWit asks his tobacco where his whisky is, Fri 19 Apr 2013, 15:18, 6 replies)

A whole family of internet hardmen,
and your story ends without anyone getting a kicking?
I want a refund!
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 19 Apr 2013, 15:53, closed)

Sorry, mate.

Next time I'll make sure to get in a proper barney and get some scars so I can post pics. :D
(EffinNitWit asks his tobacco where his whisky is, Sat 20 Apr 2013, 0:44, closed)

No no no.
Don't you worry. Everybody likes to read rambling descriptions of other people's family meals where absolutely nothing of any note happens.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Sat 20 Apr 2013, 9:11, closed)

You're rather a bright spark for reading it and then complaining about reading it, aren't you? :D

Tit.
(EffinNitWit asks his tobacco where his whisky is, Sun 21 Apr 2013, 10:19, closed)

We'll have none of your aggressive trolling here, thank you very much.

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sun 21 Apr 2013, 20:13, closed)

jesus wept

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 19 Apr 2013, 18:53, closed)