Our bus was late. We waited in the bus station. Trying to stay cool, I walked back towards some large fans while nervously glancing from our bags to the man who was supposed to tell us when our bus finally showed up.
Suddently, I heard the sound of a pop off somewhere by the ticket counter but, at first, I did not realize what the sound was. Galen turned to me and said calmly, “Someone just got tackled.”
Initially, I thought he was joking, but I turned around saw a man being pulled up from the ground. There was a crowd of men all struggling in the tangled ruckus. It was hard to make sense of what was going on.
I was not sure whether to run closer to see what was happening or run farther away. I was afraid it might have been some sort of terrorist trying to blow himself up, but soon, my instinct for danger overcame my good sense. I moved in closer to watch the fight, to try to make sense of what was happening.
Several security guards at the bus station surrounded the man on the ground, a Uighur, trying to subdue him. On the edge of the circle of guards, there was a Han Chinese man.
The Uighur man was alone in the fight, but he was wiry, and he had more to fight for, so he fought harder. The three security guards tried to subdue him, shoving him up against a wall and trying to take his photo for identification purposes. But, with a single quick wiggle, the Uighur wriggled his way out of their hold each time the guards got the camera into position, and they were neither able to subdue him nor take his picture.
During this scramble, the Han Chinese man on the edge said something to the Uighur and then reached over the security guards, trying to land a punch on the Uighur’s face. His punch did not land. One of the security guards turned from the Uighur to the Han Chinese man. Lifting his arm horizontally, the guard pressed on the Han’s windpipe and shoved him back from the fight twenty feet.
The struggle went on for three or four minutes, a long time for a fight, especially considering it was three to one. Despite their superior numbers, the Uighur man was able to slip the guards and sprint out of the bus station. The guards called the police, but the Uighur appeared to have escaped.
After the fight was over, I was able to gather that the Uighur was driving a black cab (someone with a car not approved for taxi service, very common throughout China), and the Han Chinese man was his passenger. Their dispute had arisen from a disagreement over payment, though I was never able to ascertain who was in the wrong. One Uighur passenger did point out, however, it was the Uighur, not the Han, who they tried to arrest.