An old timer in Suzhou, a British fellow, told me early this year he doesn’t go down to the  expat Bar Street Shiquanjie any longer, “I don’t know anyone down there anymore. Early on, everyone knew everyone on Shiquanjie; you knew who to avoid, who was a bore, who was fun. Now, there’s a lot of tourists and students and teachers.” The implication was that with a greater variety of unknown variables stewed in alcohol, it was much easier to find oneself in trouble from which one might find it difficult to extract.

A General Manager friend named Mario recently told me a story that confirmed the good old days on Suzhou’s Bar Street have come and gone. The story,though, put me in mind that not just Suzhou, but China at large, is experiencing a fast-forward transformation of its heart-warming Andy Griffith “ya’ll come back, ya hear?” attitude to life and money to something more akin to “what the f&%$ are you looking at?” nihilism.

Mario is no stranger to Suzhou, having lived here with his family nearly four years. His extended family came for a visit at the beginning of the summer, including his ancient mother, his daughter and her child and husband – a stout, muscular prison guard in New Mexico – as well as the assorted neighbor and an auntie thrown in for good measure.

One June evening Mario took most of the family – mother and auntie excluded – down to the Shiquanjie for a late night out of fun and mischief. They spent a bit of time at Bar Blue, next door to Pulp Fiction, to listen to some music from the 80s and 90s and to drink some tequila. Bar oak-wood affairs one finds in international hotels; the Bar seems to do a pretty good business, appealing to both Westerners and Chinese locals alike. The Bar is part of the Blue Marlin franchise, and had a severe make-over from the location’s days as Whiskey Jack’s.

Next door is the eponymous Aussie Bar, Pulp Fiction, in which ninety-percent of the patrons are young Western males. The remaining ten percent seem to be the Westernizing girlfriends of many of the guys. The place is popular for a cold beer, big-screen football games, its worn foos-ball table and the billiards competitions upstairs.

Below Bar Blue and next door to Pulp Fiction is Scarlet’s, a highly successful Chinese dance club that used to be popular with the expat crowd up to about two years ago. For as long as I can remember, it was at the patch of sidewalk fronting these three establishments that the most fights on Shiquanjie have broken out. It seems the atmosphere within that twenty square meter of asphalt has only become more rarefied.

Mario, his daughter and her husband decided after the rest of the family grew tired of the bar scene to stay around for a bit of fun. What better fun could there be than to watch two Chinese gangs face off on that patch of unholy ground? Mario explained to me that by the time they had arrived at the scene from a few drinks at Bar Blue one of the gang members was already face down in the street; two others, each from opposing gangs, were throwing punches at each other. A third fellow – Mario described him as the cool guy, better dressed and more level-headed than the two at odds with each other – inserted himself between the two, to moderate the situation.

In general, gang bangers in China – at least the young ones – are a pretty scrawny lot; nothing like what you see in the Chow Yun Fat (Zhou Ren Fa) or Simon Yam (Ren Da Hua) Hong Kong gangster movies: well-fed, well-manicured, stylish lugs with roguish  smiles. Most gang members I’ve met or seen in streets and Chinese night clubs, discos and KTV parlors are thin with anime-scruffy hair styles and rail-thin arms. It seems as they climb up the corporate ladder they just plain get fat. In general, if you don’t get mixed up in their business, they’re a rather gregarious lot, as well.

Mario’s daughter asked Mario if she could film the showdown. Mario thought there could be no harm in a bit of cinematography, so gave his assent. One of the junior gang members took umbrage to the intrusion, and knocked the camera to the ground. The daughter’s prison-guard husband was not impressed by the gang member’s expression of bad manners – especially to his wife – and with a punch to the chest and an upper-cut to the jaw laid the offending gangster unconscious on the pavement.

In the blink of an eye another gang member reached out to grab the son-in-law from behind. Mario, no Adonis himself, grabbed the second gang banger from behind, pinching his shoulders in an iron grip, and flung the youngster about five meters. The fellow skidded along the street on his face. He too lay immobilized.

The initial fight between the two gangs stopped. All eyes turned to the marauding foreigners. The two sides became a formless One against the frightened tourists. The mob edged slowly toward the three interlopers. However, the bad guys had figured out that these Westerners – the men, at least – knew how to fight. So they were slow, uncertain, feeling the lines of power and weakness between them and the intruders.

Mario explained to me that the Big Gang’s hesitation and slowness to react saved Mario and his family. A taxi was driving past and had to slow down because of the knot of activity in the street. The deceleration was just long enough for Mario to grab and fling open the back door of the taxi. Mario stuffed his son-in-law and sobbing daughter into the back seat and dived in himself. He shouted at the driver to get them out of the nuclear crisis.

When Mario told me the story he said he regretted telling his daughter she could film the scene. He added, “We shouldn’t have even watched what was going on. We should have just kept on walking. It wasn’t our business, and we were way out of our depth.”

Which brings me to my admonition for those of you dear readers of this blog who are visiting China for the first time or who are on contracts, “just visiting,” as it were: avoid bunches of distraught Chinese. That means motoring accidents, supermarket brawls, disenchanted lovers. Mob mentalities throughout the world shift and morph quickly into something ugly and terrible at the slightest provocation; nowhere does that happen more quickly than in China. “Just walk on by,” as Dionne Warwick once sang.

Modernization in China has raised the stakes for survival for many of its citizens. During Maoist times, there wasn’t much money and there was no private property so arguments when they broke out were seldom life-threatening. Now, we have gangs in little ole’ Suzhou openly disputing territory: on the Street itself, and between China and the rest of the world. What we from the West might consider as quaint or charming may be deadly serious for the Chinese involved.

China is no longer a spectator sport. Treat her with respect.