The other day, I was walking through my old stomping grounds around Xiang Mi Hu, which, by the way, I miss and want to move back too, when I noticed a disturbance in the street. It was the cops making one of their token busts of a street vendor. These folks operate under the government radar and pay no taxes for their sales, hence provoking the ire of the man. Due to the rampant capitalism here and the sheer number of these vendors, you’d think that the cops would be busy all day breaking up these little units, but they don’t. For every one bust I see, there are, oh, five hundred that appear to be unmolested. I’m sure that they all experience harrassment of some sort (usually in the form of having their little store kicked over or their merchandise thrown into the street), but it’s selective.

Anyway, I felt sorry for these folks. I don’t know what they were selling but they were an older couple. The woman was visibly distraught, yelling and crying as the policemen stoically locked their goods in the police van. The man gave more resistance, trying his best to hold on to the remaining merchandise. A small melee ensued. I’m not sure what happened to the people, they were either fined or maybe taking to jail for a while. I didn’t hang around too long.

I was worried about taking video or pictures, but I noticed a large number of people filming the incident on their cell phones. Though you can’t really tell the cast of characters in the movie, the owner of the wagon, which the vendor used to sell his goods, is hanging on to it for dear life.

The selective busts reminds me when some of the DVD stores have to temporarily vanish into the woodwork for a weekend while the “bust” takes place. Which reminds me of a new tact by some of the DVD places. They mix their inventory with legitmate DVDs. Normally, the DVD movies come in plastic sleeves which is complete with the standard coverwork – they just don’t bother putting it into a plastic DVD case. Anyway, they leave the big boxed sets of fake TV series out on display. This is because it’s hard to distinguish the real from the fake. However, it’s fairly easy for us native English speakers to tell the difference because the translations on the back are usually really bad.

Here’s a highly mobile street vendor. This guy is literally in the street, on the off-ramp of a major 6-lane artery, mind you: