Nanjing Nightmare!!! (not really, I just liked the alliteration)

I’ve enjoyed writing Lamien Love, but I’m going to take a break. There are so many things I want to write about! Maybe Lamien Love will be a biweekly (who am I kidding? more like monthly) post on here. As for now, I have breaking news from China!

Not really. But there was a bit of scare in my neighborhood here in Nanjing over the weekend. Unbeknownst to me, there was a pretty serious hostage situation on Sunday afternoon in the apartment complex across the road from me. Which led to yet another interesting “Chinese Culture” lesson.

Violent crimes in China - gun-shootings, stabbings, murder - are pretty uncommon. I remember living in Shanghai in 2007 when someone held up customers and employees at a KFC at gunpoint. I remember everyone’s shock after it happened too. No one was safe - not even at KFC.

So in a “watercooler-esque” conversation with a coworker after the weekend, he asked me if I had heard about the story. “Nope,” I said trying to think back to what exactly I had been doing on Sunday. I was shocked when he told me about the man dressed up as a service man, the attacker holding an old woman hostage, the kids coming home to find grandma with a crazy man and calling the police, the hostage negotiator and the eventual shooting (and killing) of the attacker. This was pretty shocking and a break from the usual “What did you do this weekend?” and “Did you read that ‘insert uninteresting headline here’?”


So later, I asked another coworker about it. She started to get really aggravated with the guy who had divulged the story to me. “Why did you tell her?” she asked. I had to quickly intercept the conversation saying “It’s ok. It’s ok.” She was legit mad that the other coworker told me about hostage hold up. I never really had a clear understanding as to why she was mad he had told me, but I assume she didn’t want me to feel unsafe. After all, this was about two football fields away from where I live. But as I told her and the other coworker repeatedly, “I would rather know about these kinds of things than not know.”

But I guess that’s not exactly the “Chinese way.” When I was telling a friend about it later, he simply responded with a “Yup, that’s classic Chinese “head in the sand” syndrome” (or something to that effect). I’ve heard about and seen my fair share of crazies. I mean, Gainesville has them all over the place - asking to use your phone, holding up crappy banks, stealing beer. And even though I worried about the crazies out there, I was still glad I knew about these stories. Being ignorant and blind to potential dangers is just, well, not very smart.

So, I made a point to tell Eva not to open the door to anyone suspicious or who wasn’t already scheduled to come to our apartment. You might be surprised I felt the need to verbalize this, but this girl lacks some common sense - God love her though. For those who might be worried, I’m perfectly fine and pretty much unfazed. But I am glad I’m not sticking my head in the sand with this.