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Never saw a fight in China. Just witnessed on last week in Japan outside Shibuya station.

I have seen a fight once onboard a long distance train. An obvious drug addict was being a nuisance and then started to threaten the family sitting close to him. The train police either did not want to get involved or then somehow gave a discreet go ahead but four to five guys beat that man up pretty bad including banging him with their shoes.

(my boldings)
#1) Aren't you the person who recently posted a lament about his Shanghai girlfriend wanting you to buy her a house? Is there some reason you are still hopping around trying to chat up other girls? Just sayin'....

#2) In Beijing, I believe this one is called "Maggies."

Yes, but I get dragged into these places far too often...by her, or by other friends.....I just sometimes get carried away practicing Shanghainese with locals....anyways, that's off topic.

ALL of the younger foreigners in China make it nearly impossible for me to have a decent conversation with anyone. They all automatically think the worst of me...just like when I say I am half French half American...they say 'oh, so you owe me a lot of money from your government, AND you think Tibet and Taiwan aren't part of China....' This goes for both guys and girls...I think they all hate me sometimes....

Anyways, the younger guys are definitely the source of the problem, which is why I try to avoid that crowd whenever possible. I recently met a couple of guys who teach English in SH, with have Asian girl obsessions, and who got tired of consistent rejection in Korea and Japan. They moved here and basically spend 4 nights a week trying to meet a girl in a bar. I imagine they're not the only ones. I think if I was a Chinese dude, and I was reasonably drunk, I would definitely strongly consider fighting a laowai who was running around bars for girls.

Why they fight the older foreigners? Probably because they come to China and get a ridiculous housing allowance for no reason while they have to pay 5 million RMB for a house. Or the fact that they do the same job and the foreigner often makes 5 times a much as the local. I heard something the other day about Beijing University graduates averaging 4,000/month as their pay for their first job. I know I'd be pissed if I graduated Harvard and was working for $750 a month, while some foreigner is making 10k/month doing the same thing....remember, China is all about money. Money makes people mad.

a) yes. Particularily "interns".

b) Stay in China for a bit longer and get the whole picture. I wouldn't want to move and work there, if I only got "basic" (=non-expat accomodation).

c) "The same thing", that's something I'd like to dispute...

Oh, and establishments like Zapatas in Shanghai are pure evil, just avoid them!

Me either though, of course, I don't go on pub crawls in Sanlitun looking for Chinese girls to score with.

Actually I have never been to "bar streets" in either Beijing or Shanghai and don't have any idea where they exist. If you don't count Xintiandi in Shanghai as a bar street that is?

What I would like to find is an "Izakaya"/Gastropub kind of place where you could have some Chinese/Japanese/Korean food with your friends even at 4am and then down a few quality beers, wine glasses or spirits. If anyone knows these kind of venues in or around Shanghai I'm all ears.

I don't. We go to Xintiandi all the time and never have the least bit of trouble there.

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The acts of violence I have witnessed were not at bars and did not
involve foreigners.

Women punching each other at train station.
Young men beating another young man outside a restaurant.
Young men beating an elderly woman on the street.
Robbery of a young woman on a busy street.

In each instance bystanders did nothing, in some instances police
were present but did nothing. Several of the incidents ended with
the victim being transported away by ambulance.

Especially on Wed. night.

read their sign

http://www.winterson.com/pics/zapata.jpg

I'd imagine foreigners with housing allowances in China get them not for "no reason" but because their company feels it is worth it to move them to China and wants to give them housing that is reasonably close to what they left back where they came from. Equating Beijing University and Harvard is a joke and for many recent graduates I've met 4000 RMB would be overpaying based upon their skill set. 5 million RMB for a house has nothing to do with foreigners housing allowances and everything to do with a massive housing bubble created by rich Chinese speculators and government policies that favor those rich Chinese.

As far as the topic of fighting, I've been speaking with other foreign friends in Shanghai about this recently and there is a general consensus that the problem of nationalism in China coupled with rising inflation and increasing income disparity will only make it more uncomfortable for foreigners in the coming years to live and work in China. I for one can say that the minute I'm singled out for being a foreigner and attacked or threatened, is the minute I go open up my bed and breakfast back in the US! Chinese history has many examples of things turning bad rather quickly for the lao wai.

As a young foreign male myself (21, to be precise), I would like to emphasise this point: there's a big difference between the language school/English teacher crowd of troublemakers who spend all their time in Wudaokou and Sanlitun, and the young professionals and researchers who see their time in China as something more than an excuse to prolong their frat boy lifestyle on the cheap and procrastinate facing reality for a few more years.

It should be hardly surprising that this first group manages to often find themselves in alcohol-fuelled brawls over women; they do the same back in the US or UK or wherever they happen to be from. Everyone I know who has had problems in China fits nicely into this first category. I've yet to meet any members of the second group, on the other hand, who have found themselves caught up in a random bar fight.

There may well be some element of xenophobia, nationalism, or racism present in some of the altercations between young Chinese and foreign males, but in my experience, this type of trouble finds those who have gone looking for it. And by this I don't simply mean daring to go to Babyface or VICS or M2 on occasion�if you don't act like a drunken idiot, it's perfectly possible to patronise such establishments and have some fun without problems.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Mdog, all I can say is you're hanging out with the wrong crow.
Such a dispointment -