Wong walked into the underpass in a rush. The pedestrian subway was the only way to cross Shennan Road from the subway station. The subway was not air conditioned, and the air was stifling. Sweat trickled down his back into his waistband. Still he hurried—he was running late.
As he walked down the stairs into the corridor he checked his cellphone for messages, scrolling down the emails. Two calls had come in while he was on the train, neither urgent. He walked briskly across the central corridor that ran under the road above, dodging a few students in uniform and a housewife carrying a shopping bag. He turned left at the end of the underpass and walked toward the sunlight streaming in from the exit. He planned to take the stairs two at a time to save time.
Suddenly he found himself in a knot of people bunched on the stairs. Someone right in front of him, a burly guy with a crew-cut, was talking on his cellphone, waving his right arm widely as he made his point. Wong also sensed some people coming down the stairs opposite look at him strangely. He tried to shuffle off to the side but found himself stuck in the tiny crowd. Then a tiny point of awareness flared up: he was being cornered. At the same time he felt a slight pressure in his pocket. Moving his hands down he felt inside and realized his loose cash had disappeared. He stopped on the stairs to check, feeling foolish, with a thousand images rapidly playing through his mind. By this time the crowd had melted away. His true situation then sank in: he had been pickpocketed.
A Special Reputation
Street crimes such as this happen in all cities. But cities like Shenzhen are special, building up a knotty reputation for street crime, a crime mystique. Just how bad is it? Let’s see.
We could first check police statistics. But in Shenzhen these reveal little. In China, in most places, the police operate in their own universe with their own game rules. In the Shenzhen police rulebook stability comes first, self-interest second, and beyond that, you pay as you go. Social stability will be maintained, if only to avoid scrutiny from senior government leaders. No one wants the full weight of the province or, heaven forbid, the central government, to descend anywhere nearby, so, no major or serious crimes, and no social unrest. In all such instances the police will act resolutely to quash crime.
Second rule, the police act to protect their own. This means they control their fate, to avoid being blindsided by events. It also means they look for opportunity to earn money and protect their own. Connect with street crime groups and cooperate with them. Ask them to serve up sacrificial lambs when necessary. And lean on them enough to get a reasonable cut in any income. Street crime is fully allowed, as long as it does not escalate.
Third rule, individuals can negotiate for services on a pay-as-you-go basis. Of course the police can serve, for the right price. If a crime is serious enough, or an individual wants certain revenge, police services are available.
Such policies are common in many places. In China’s border regions they are widely known, if not liked. The police write the rules. Their actions mirror those of criminals, and they often work in tandem. All these unfortunate facts reflect Shenzhen’s status as a border city.
Shenzhen: Border Magnet
Shenzhen is home to nine million busy, money-obsessed, souls, many of them low-paid migrants fresh from the countryside. Economic growth has been outstanding and incredible, averaging 10.5% per year over the past 20 years. Shenzhen in fact is the poster child for the era of economic liberalization brought on by Deng Xiaoping from 1979. He accomplished something great in dragging those four hundred million peasants out of abject poverty, and at least on the surface he did all this by starting in Shenzhen, ground zero for the miracle. His highly publicized trip to Shenzhen in 1989, immediately after the Tiananmen incident, highlighted his resolve in moving forward with economic reform
Shenzhen as a result of all this is an anomaly: located in the Pearl
River Delta, that mishmash of rivers and canals anchored by Hong Kong and Guangzhou, it should by rights be simply a traditional town in one of the heartlands of Chinese culture. Instead Shenzhen has the character of a border city, filled with gunslingers, pirates and low-lifes. Shenzhen is the Wild West.
Some crime, then, is to be expected. What we find though is an exaggerated reputation for getting robbed, or hurt. This fear is greatest among Hong Kong visitors.
Crime in Shenzhen: Fact and Legend
Shenzhen and Hong Kong are joined at the hip, two sister cities joined at the hip, each reflecting the other. Shenzhen was always the Hong Kong’s playground, where people came to eat, drink, and play. It was thus a magnet for criminal elements. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Hong Kong papers and TV channels were filled with accounts of people getting ripped off over the border. Even more importantly, urban legends circulated wildly. Shenzhen had, by 2005, a huge image problem.
One TV expose from 2002 focused on individual Hong Kong people travelling to Hong Kong. One visitor, Mr. Hong, was walking through a pedestrian underpass one day, in broad daylight, when he was suddenly surrounded by five or six men. He was pushed against a wall and threatened. He lost two cell phones and a watch and was cut by a long knife, requiring ten stitches in his thigh.
Another visitor, Mr. Cai, was tricked up to a room by a woman--at least that was his account. Four men then burst in, saying “we just want money, you will be unharmed if you cooperate.” They handcuffed him and held him at knifepoint. Cai also noted they were snorting drugs. They were not happy with the small amount of cash he had, and they took his two credit cards. They warned him that if the passwords did not work they would come back to kill him. “My legs melted when I heard that threat,” said Cai. The reporter later confirmed that banks take no responsibility in cases where passwords are lost or used by criminals. The lesson from this case: don’t take your credit cards to China.
Fear of going to China actually led many Hong Kong people to avoid going there altogether. The most fearsome stories involved jewelry or body organs. The stories about jewelry highlighted the value of pieces that would be viewed as commonplace or not so valuable in Hong Kong but were seen by people “over the border” as extremely valuable. Thomas So went to a nightclub in Shenzhen in the early 1990s. He was spotted there wearing a gold necklace, which clearly stood out around his neck when he was on the dance floor. Gangsters followed him out of the nightclub, accosted him, and when he struggled killed him, all for a necklace. Similar stories involved gangsters, often riding up on motorcycles, grabbing tourists’ arms and severing a digit simply to get a gold ring.
Body parts stories plugged into the growing lore about the international trade in organs. These stories circulate in many parts of the world, usually in relatively poor places where people may become desperate. In the Shenzhen version they always involved a desperate protagonist kidnapping, drugging, and finally operating on an unsuspecting passenger from wealthy Hong Kong, resulting in the passenger waking up without a kidney. The assumption here is that the kidney of someone from Hong Kong would somehow be superior to those from anyone else in China, perhaps having been fattened by a rich diet of western milk and fast food.
The most outrageous of the urban legends stories involved taxi drivers in China. Evidently every taxi driver took his life in his hands when working in China. Often poor migrants from inland provinces such as Hunan or Sichuan would threaten drivers with knives, force the drivers to hand over all cash, and then offing them and dumping the body and car outside a town. Why would they kill the drivers, often for small amounts of cash? Because the drivers had seen their faces and could easily identify them. Some time around 1990 taxi companies in China began to build metal and plastic barriers between the driver’s seat and the shotgun and back seat. These were said to be protect the drivers against knife attacks. These barriers simply fueled stories of danger among Hong Kong visitors.
In a similar traffic-oriented vein, long-distance bus companies in China began filming bus passengers with hand-held CD cameras before bus journeys, so the police would have a video record of all customers who boarded the bus. This reflected the widespread practice of criminals boarding and holding up passengers at knifepoint once a journey had started.
Such incidents no doubt did take place in Shenzhen and surrounding towns. But as folklore they took on lives of their own and were amplified into a general perception of danger and lawlessness. Shenzhen was simply not safe, it was felt, and you went there at your own risk.
Encounters on the Streets
My company moved operations to Shenzhen from Hong Kong in 1997, and by 2003 had transferred almost all Hong Kong positions to Shenzhen. We made a major commitment to Shenzhen. That made it tough when some staff refused to go. Upon questioning it became clear these stories of fear and loss over the border had influenced their thinking, at least in part. In some cases the staff chose to give up their jobs rather than make the move.
While there was a tendency for the stories to take on lives of their own, some of the stories undoubtedly had some foundation. One story we knew well was a supplier’s staff being murdered, right under everyone’s noses. Ling had been a loyal assistant in Chan’s office for years, and we all knew her because we could get reliable figures from her. She was short, cute, and energetic. Evidently she also had a relationship with Chan, but that was not widely known then. Regardless, one day she announced she was ready to move on and leave the company. Chan planned to give her a sizeable leaving bonus. Word of the bonus got out and was widely discussed in the factory. One day just before she was scheduled to leave she was cooking lunch and heard someone knock on the door, downstairs. She went to check, upon which a man rushed in and grabbed her neck. He probably pushed her to give him money, but he pressed too hard and she died on the spot. Chan, upstairs waiting for his lunch, came down to check, found her body, and rushed out calling for help. Miraculously, two policemen were on patrol nearby. They rushed out to find the perpetrator and immediately stumbled on him. They beat him with their nightsticks. As it turned out the perpetrator was none other than the factory’s production manager. His motivation: greed, and anger.
So these things actually happened. However I personally had never had experience crime over the border, until three years ago. At that point I joined the list of victims.
The first incident occurred as I descended an escalator into the subway system on Shennan Road, in the heart of Shenzhen. It was evening and the subway was not crowded. I stood on the escalator. Suddenly I became aware of a presence behind me. I turned and found a man with his hand in my pocket. I was incensed. As we neared the bottom of the escalator I grabbed his wrist. “You are stealing my things,” I said, loudly. The young man, student-age, looked startled and confused. He twisted away from me, and as we had reached the bottom I needed to turn to catch my footing. Just at that time another man coming down the escalator bumped into us. By this time the first man had run off.
While this played out I noticed another man coming toward me in the pedestrian subway, and it unsettled me. He observed us closely as he spoke on his cellphone. When I considered giving chase, it appeared the third man was ready to chase me also. It smelled like there were several involved, and anyway I had not lost anything. So I reconsidered my plans to give chase and stopped.
The pickpockets in Shenzhen, I was learning, worked in gangs. The lead pick is surrounded by facilitators, guards, and mentors. In my case the man behind was most probably a guard, ready to help in case of a physical confrontation. And the man coming in the opposite direction, eyes glued to me, was no doubt a handler or mentor, tracking of the situation.
I was later targeted again in that same pedestrian crossing, and as it turned out by the same gang. This time I was surrounded by three or four in a midday-rush up a busy stairway. I felt something in my pocket, something very slight, and reached down to feel it. I felt wood. I grabbed it and twisted around. To my surprise I faced the same young guy who had targeted me before. And once again he showed real shock, no doubt because he too recognized me. He was clutching a super-sized bamboo tweezer, made from flattened, polished bamboo, the kind often used in Chinese food markets to pick up fresh food and hand it to customers. These are twice as long as chopsticks yet afford an extremely strong grip—the perfect tool for reaching deep into someone’s pocket and extracting things. When not in use the entire piece can be concealed up someone’s sleeve.
This time I did not show anger. Instead I played along, saying nothing, as he feigned annoyance at my having grabbed his possession. I let him and his friends pass up the stairs, grateful the incident did not accelerate.
The risk on the streets of Shenzhen is real, however, and the more you walk those streets the sooner you come to your day of reckoning. Mine came soon enough. I was walking down a shopping street in the afternoon. Lined with small shops, it was one of those side streets that spring to life at dusk, when workers come out for dinner, but during the day is quiet. Once again I was engaged in conversation with my companions, and felt no particular danger, since it was hot and the streets were not busy. However at one point I did feel that now increasingly familiar light presence in my right front pocket, and I reached down to check my bills. I then became aware of a young man standing right behind, close enough to touch but appearing disinterested. I simply spun to my right, making it impossible for anyone to grab anything, and I ended up facing front again. I felt pretty good about this slick move: I had foiled another attempt, without any incident or confrontation.
Within 60 seconds that was about to change. I felt once again the pressure of fingers in my pocket. This time I swung around to my left and saw another guy actually holding the wad of bills taken from my pocket. Anger and instinct took over once again. I grabbed his wrist. The bills fell to the ground in a pile. I looked straight in his eyes and saw once again that look of surprise and fear. Still holding his wrist with my left hand I knelt down and tried to pick up my money with the right. It was then I raised my face and saw a flashing point of light. The gleam from the afternoon sun silhouetted his head with harsh light, making it hard to make anything out, but it was clear he brandished something and his left arm was cocked, ready to bring it down any minute. It was a monstrous ice-pick, certainly several chopsticks long, made from stainless steel, absolutely blood-curdling. My attacker actually plunged it forward slightly, as if to warn me off. In a flash my anger was replaced by and terror. I stood up partially, holding my own arm over my head, with red and green bills flying to the right and left. By standing up I also made him lose his balance. He fell back, still menacing with the bright point of steel. I let go of his wrist. He took two steps back, turned, and disappeared into a nearby storefront.
My heart beat rapidly. I quickly gathered up my things and stood, expectantly. I eventually walked on with my friends, but kept checking over my shoulder a few times. The sense of imminent danger is a hard feeling to shake.
It’s the sense of danger you carry with you. And that extra awareness of living and working with danger changes you. You become hyper-aware, vigilance built into every waking moment. Yes, the streets of Shenzhen are dangerous, dangerous in a unique way because of its border identity, but that danger lives alongside attraction. Danger is, it seems, something you can live with.
