An attempt to capitalize on widespread outrage at chengguan urban management staff was foiled by the continuing heat wave on Saturday, when a supposedly dead “beating victim” had to get up for a drink of water. From Xinhua:
The incident occurred around 4 p.m., when more than 10 men were holding the sheet-covered vendor’s “corpse” on a gurney near the Jianghan Road subway station in the provincial capital Wuhan.
They claimed that urban management workers had beaten the man to death and demanded tens of thousands of yuan in compensation, a worker with the city’s urban management committee said Monday.
More than 300 people gathered at the scene, and later, over 80 police officers were dispatched to maintain order there.
The crowd dispersed two hours later, when the “dead” vendor suddenly jumped up, grabbed a bottle of water and drank it before saying, “It’s too hot. I can’t bear it anymore.”
The soft drink vendor surnamed Han and two others have been detained for disturbing public order.
The scheme apparently came to Han after chengguan confiscated his stock following a minor scuffle earlier in the day. He and his accomplices presumably hoped to replicate protests against the fatal beating of watermelon vendor Deng Zhengjia last month, which prompted an 897,000 yuan ($146,000) compensation payment to Deng’s family.
