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“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded.

He began yelling at me, smiling, leering. He was with others, young men with cruel expressions. A crowd had stopped to watch. They stood silently, just watching. I didn’t like this. None of it. I didn’t understand what was going on. I had been hit. I didn’t know why. The man continued to yell. And he smirked. He leered. The scene was incomprehensible. I decided to walk away. I turned to go. I started walking.

SMACK.

“WHAT THE FUCK, YOU MOTHERFUCKER,” I shouted.

He had hit me with an open-handed slap to the back of my head. Now he was taunting me, smiling maniacally, yelling. There were hundreds of people gathered around, staring with inscrutable faces. No one said a word.

“COULD SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT HE’S SAYING? WHAT DOES HE WANT?”

Adrenaline was surging through my veins. Being hit, unexpectedly and without cause, had left me in a state of confused shock. And fear. What the fuck? I thought this was a police state.

“You,” I said, addressing a man with an officious-looking name tag. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Do you speak English?”

My assailant continued to scream and leer at me.

“Anyone?”

There was nothing, just hundreds of faces staring, utterly devoid of expression. Then I saw Mr. Sex Maniac.

“Do you understand Chinese? Can you tell me what he’s saying?”

“No, man. But my girlfriend does.”

But she refused to say anything. She demurred and turned away with blank eyes.

“Where’re you from, man?” Mr. Sex Maniac asked.

I’m being stalked by a violent lunatic and you want to get all social-like? What the fuck!

“California,” I muttered. You useless, unhelpful shit.

I decided I needed to get away from this as quickly as possible. I walked on. I turned to see what the lunatic would do. He continued to scream. When he saw me looking at him, he smiled and then screamed some more. I kept walking.

SMACK.

I kept walking. Walking. Walking.

So I was a little stressed. A little tense. Discombobulated. Should I have hit him back? Yes. Probably. I don’t know. Maybe he knew that kung-fu voodoo magic. Perhaps he’d spent his formative years in the Shaolin Temple. I’d hit him and he’d drop me like Bruce Lee. Possibly he had a knife. It was a very long walk back to the hotel, as such walks are when, at any moment, you expect to feel the cool blade of a knife slicing through your torso. This was not typical of China, this getting slapped around at rush hour. In China, one gets the death penalty for far less. I simply had no idea what, exactly, had just transpired. Typically, in fights one knows precisely what they’re fighting about. Was it because I was German? But I am not German. I am half-Dutch and half-Czech. Both halves have been invaded by Germany. Maybe he thought I was someone else. Laowais all look alike. Could be. Maybe he was insane. Very likely. Maybe it was an anti-foreigner thing. Possibly. As a foreigner, I wasn’t exactly feeling the love in China. Perhaps it was a robbery attempt. He did ask for money. I don’t know. It was just strange.

But what chilled me to the bone was the reaction of the crowd. There was nothing. Just hundreds of faces. And their expression? Dead. Lifeless. Nothing there. Just watching. All of them just watching with blank expressions, doing nothing, saying nothing, completely still. They would watch me die there. I would be stabbed. An artery would rupture, spilling blood. I’d be on a sidewalk in Hangzhou, China. Bleeding. Dying. And they would watch with lifeless faces. I would die. And they would watch as if it were a spectator sport.

But bleeding to death on a crowded sidewalk in Hangzhou was not on the itinerary. What to do now? I paced inside my hotel room, wandering from wall to wall. I was agitated. My adrenaline had surged and found no outlet. I felt like running for five, ten, fifteen miles. But I did not want to go back outside. And then I saw it. A little triangular card with an English translation. Spa. Relaxing massage. Korea Massage. Thailand massage. Swedish massage.