I have experienced my fair share of thievery since I have been in China, caught one thief in Shanghai and another on the number 65 bus in Nanjing. The ones who relieved me of my purse and my phone managed to escape my attention though. And my three stolen bikes…. well who knows what happened to them.
I had day-dreamed about catching a thief in the act again and beating the shit out of him. I had imagined causing him a great deal of physical pain in a soft warm place on his body where pain is easily inflicted by women on men!
However, today as I ‘felt his collar’ (literally) I was in a fairly relaxed mood and therefore not feeling particularly aggresive. I was walking down Zhongshan Bei Lu past the fabric market. The pavements were not particularly busy and in front of me were two girls walking side by side with handbags over their shoulders. This scrawny thief boy was very close behind them and had his hand inside one of the shoulder bags.
As in my Shanghai exerience it took a few seconds to realise what was going on but then I rushed forward, grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back and shouted at him. The girls turned around and I explained what he was doing. Needless to say they were very grateful.
As for the thief, I checked his pockets to see whether he had any other stuff on him and pushed him away.
Then I had a quick thought – I could take a photo of him and post it on my blog. So I reached in my (inside – I have learned my lesson!) pocket for my iphone and followed him into the bicycle lane. I knew he would turn around to see if anyone was still following him so I waited and shot. A few seconds later his accomplice stopped on his ebike and he jumped on the back. A man standing nearby explained to me that they were from Xinjaing (the Muslim region of China).
It has to be said that if you spend any time in China you will tire of people telling you that all the thieves are from XinJiang Province – what a slur on a whole culture. So to test what the man had told me, as the two sped off of the ebike I shouted after them “Salam Allekum” to which the driver shouted “Allekum Salam” and gave me ‘the bird’.
So there we have it – unless they are ethnic Chinese trying to mimic XinJiang people, the evidence doesn’t look good for the man’s claim that all thieves in Nanjing are from XinJiang.