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One of China’s ‘Dancing Grannies’ Is Shot as Tensions Boil Over ‘Dancing Granny’ Is Shot, but Don’t Expect the Music to Stop
(about 11 hours later)
BEIJING — With the din they make, they are often mocked and berated and worse. Hounds have been loosed on them. Rocks flung, water sprayed. They have been pelted with excrement, more than once. And yet they shimmy on. BEIJING — With the din they make, they are often mocked and berated and worse. Dogs have been loosed on them. Rocks flung, water sprayed.
China’s “dancing grannies” are a tough bunch. Yet those “dancing grannies,” the middle-aged and elderly outdoor dance enthusiasts who crowd sidewalks, parks and squares across China, have shimmied on.
They are the middle-aged and elderly outdoor dance enthusiasts who crowd sidewalks, parks and squares. They include quite a few men, despite their popular name, and have become a colorful fixture in towns and cities, swirling, skipping and swaying in happy rows, during the mornings and often late into the night. Not even the excrement lobbed by irate residents has deterred them.
Too much of a fixture for some neighbors who can somehow grow tired of hours of throbbing disco music, electro-folk tunes and Bollywood-influenced dance numbers blasted over tinny loudspeakers. But last week, opposition to their boisterous line dancing took a violent turn, when a man in the southern region of Guangxi opened fire on a troupe near his home, wounding a woman in the leg, according to news reports on Friday.
In the southern region of Guangxi, friction between amateur dance crews and residents grew serious this month, when a man took out a small air rifle and shot a woman, wounding her in the leg, according to news reports on Friday. The assailant fled but was captured Wednesday by the police, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
The man “said he was upset by the noisy group of women dancing near his house, who mocked him when they turned down his request to quiet down,” Xinhua, the state news agency, reported. The reports gave only his surname, Mo. The man was apparently riled up by the din, and he turned apoplectic when the women mocked his request to simmer down.
Bloodshed was unintended, Mr. Mo told the police in Yangshuo, the scenic town where the fracas broke out on March 3. It was the most serious unpleasant episode associated with the “dancing grannies,” a social phenomenon that has polarized many Chinese over the very public — and audible — nature of their activities.
“He was aiming at the stereo speaker, but accidentally shot a woman who was operating the machine in the leg,” said Xinhua, describing what he told the police. In recent years, the media has documented each outburst directed at the ladies — and quite a few men — who take their dance moves and amplified music to coveted slivers of urban public space.
A report from a news website in Guangxi said that Mr. Mo was also angry because the group refused to help lift his car when it became stuck near the square where they danced. In 2014, residents in the southeastern city of Wenzhou spent $42,000 on a sound system that blasted dancers with warnings about violating noise pollution laws. In 2013, a Beijing man released a snarling trio of Tibetan mastiffs on one troupe; a few months earlier, residents of a high rise in Wuhan dumped feces onto a group of gray-haired women.
Mr. Mo fled to neighboring Guangdong Province, but the police caught him on Wednesday, breaking China’s latest case of serious violence involving dancing retirees. Such disorder has alarmed the Chinese authorities, who tend to look unfavorably upon any kind of unregulated public activity. Last March, the central government issued a set of 12 “official” routines meant to supplant the throbbing disco music, electro-folk tunes and Bollywood-influenced dance numbers that are often blasted over tinny loudspeakers.
But after years of confrontations with the amateur outdoor troupes, the file of incidents is growing thick. The new routines were described as “a nationally unified, scientifically crafted new activity that brings positive energy to the people,” Xinhua reported at the time.
In 2013, a man in Beijing tried to disperse dancers near his home by firing a shotgun into the air and unleashing three Tibetan mastiffs. In the city of Wuhan, in central China, neighbors dumped excrement from a building onto a gathering of dancing ladies. Many people ridiculed the government online, saying it should instead spend more money creating recreational spaces for retirees who crave the exercise and camaraderie that dancing provides. Some said the model routines were too complicated. Others said the regulations made no attempt to reduce the noise.
Mr. Mo has been detained “for endangering public safety,” Xinhua reported, and it seems likely that he will spend time in the relative quiet of a prison. In the end, however, the effort failed, with most groups refusing to adapt the officially sanctioned routines.
The conflicts, though, have raged on. According to media reports that described the March 3 incident in Guangxi, the man first became angry when a group of women gallivanting across a square in the scenic town of Yangshuo refused to help lift his car after it became stuck nearby.
The news reports, which gave only the man’s surname, Mo, said hethen took out an air rifle and opened fire, apparently with the goal of silencing the party.
“He was aiming at the stereo speaker,” Xinhua said, “but accidentally shot a woman who was operating the machine in the leg.”
Mr. Mo fled to neighboring Guangdong Province, and was captured six days later.