Thirty Seconds, Twelve Watermelons, and a Receipt for Violence

Thirty Seconds

At eight p.m. on July 28, at the night market on Daqi Street in Beilun, Ningbo, oil hissed on the griddle. A fried noodle cart sent up white smoke. Xiao Meng sat on a low stool watching his stall. Watermelons and grapes sat in front of him. A middle-aged man came over to pick a melon. His fingers pressed the rind. His fingernail dug in.

Xiao Meng said, “Pick gently. Don’t pinch the melon.”

That sentence started everything. The man turned. They argued. The woman beside him, Fan Mouling, joined. She made a phone call. Minutes later, Yang Mouri arrived. He did not ask what had happened. He did not listen. He walked to the stall, picked up a watermelon, and smashed it onto Xiao Meng’s head as Xiao Meng sat on the stool.

One. Another. More than a dozen watermelons, one after another. Fan Mouling threw grapes. Bystanders shouted, “Stop!” Someone called the police. Yang heard the call, stopped, and said: “How much for all these melons? I’ll buy them all!”

He pulled out cash, slapped it in Xiao Meng’s face, and tried to leave. People blocked him. Police arrived and took control of Yang and Fan.

Those words can be taken apart. He used the watermelon as a weapon. He threw cash in Xiao Meng’s face and treated the payment as a way to close the incident. The gesture looked like a night-market purchase: pick a bag of melons, pay, carry it away. He had smashed a person, not a melon.

The next day, Beilun police issued a notice. Yang Mouri and Fan Mouling were placed under administrative detention and fined. Under Article 43 of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law, assaulting another person carries five to ten days of detention and a fine of 200 to 500 yuan. Assault by a group carries ten to fifteen days and a fine of 500 to 1,000 yuan. A husband and wife acting together counts as a group. The maximum is fifteen days plus 1,000 yuan. The police gave the heaviest administrative punishment available under that article.

Xiao Meng went to Beilun Hospital at noon the next day. The doctor ordered him kept for observation. The diagnosis: head injury, dizziness, concussion, injury to the supraspinatus tendon of the left shoulder joint, left shoulder joint effusion. Five days in the hospital. More than 10,000 yuan in medical costs.

After Yang and Fan left detention, the relevant department arranged mediation. Posts online claimed they would not pay a cent. That was not true. They were willing to pay 10,000. Later their lawyer said 20,000 at most. Xiao Meng’s father, Old Meng, would not accept. The medical costs alone were over 10,000. There was lost work time. There was lost fruit. What he could not swallow was the act itself: using watermelons to smash a person’s head, one after another.

Mediation failed several times. On September 19, with police mediation, the two sides signed an agreement. The other side paid more than 60,000 yuan. It covered medical costs, fruit losses, lost work, and mental distress.

More than 60,000 yuan. Break it down.

Medical costs: five days in the hospital, soft tissue bruises on the head, over 10,000. Fruit losses: a dozen watermelons and grapes, a few thousand. Lost work: from July 28 to September 19, nearly two months. A night market stall earns nothing on a day it does not open. The rest is mental distress.

In Chinese judicial practice, mental distress compensation in public security cases usually comes to a few thousand yuan. Anything over 10,000 usually requires especially severe circumstances. This 60,000-plus was assembled by pushing every item to its ceiling. It is the maximum of compensatory damages. Not one yuan of it is a “lesson fee.”

Xiao Meng’s father later gave an interview. He said his son usually has a hot temper, quick to argue when words do not agree. That night, two watermelon knives lay beside the stall. Xiao Meng sat there, was hit for thirty seconds, and did not fight back once. The father said: “It’s lucky my son didn’t hit back. Otherwise the consequences would have been impossible to contain. I want to praise him.”

The father is right. But turn it around. If Xiao Meng had hit back, police would likely have called it mutual assault. He would have gone from victim to participant. He would have been detained too. And there were two knives nearby. If he had lost control and picked one up, it would not have been the Public Security Administration Punishments Law. It would have been the Criminal Law. A twenty-one-year-old, in the thirty seconds of being smashed in the head with watermelons, calculated that the price of hitting back was higher than the price of being hit.

Many online commenters praised him for staying calm and restrained. What they praised was a victim not turning himself from victim into defendant. In those thirty seconds, the breath he swallowed, 60,000 yuan cannot buy back.

The administrative punishment was the heaviest available. The civil compensation was pushed to its ceiling. Procedurally, nothing is wrong. He was detained. He paid. But the result tells people that violence can be settled with money.

For Yang Mouri, 60,000-plus yuan and a dozen days of detention are a cost he can pay. After he gets out, life goes on. Xiao Meng? Five days in the hospital. The stall closed for nearly two months. Income stopped. Customers scattered. How long those thirty seconds will replay in his head is hard to say.

Once a mediation agreement is performed, the public security organ’s punishment power is extinguished. The victim cannot seek additional punishment. When Xiao Meng received the 60,000-plus, he also lost the legal path to pursue further responsibility. The law can fill in medical costs and watermelon money. It cannot fill in the breath a person swallows while sitting on a low stool and having his head smashed with melons.

On September 19, after the mediation agreement was signed, Xiao Meng folded the paper and put it in the waist pack where he kept change. The night market lights came on. The loudspeaker at the next stall called out, “Watermelons, ten yuan for three jin.” He sat back down on the low stool. New melons were in front of him. Someone came to pick one. Fingers pressed the rind.

He said: “Pick gently.”