Seniors hit man over bus seat

A young man on a public bus in Hubei, China, ignored calls to give up his reserved seat to an elderly man, which resulted in him being attacked by several other elderly passengers.

The man, who was not named, was sitting in a yellow seat, which is reserved for the elderly, pregnant women or the infirm.

A video clip, captured on a mobile phone, was uploaded to Chinese video sharing website NetEase by an unknown user, reported BBC.

When he is asked to give up his seat to an older man, he refuses and ignores the calls of the other passengers. He begins shouting at them before he is pushed and hit several times.

At a stand-off with the other passengers, he appears to make a call to the police and later tries to drag the old man off the bus, but is stopped by a woman who appears to be the man's wife.

ANGRY REACTION

The original video has been viewed more than 160,000 times, and copies on other social networks have been seen many times over.

The reactions on both NetEase and microblogging website Weibo have been fierce, with the vast majority angry with the older people.

"If they have the strength to beat people up, why do they need seats?" asked one.

Said another: "The young man was wrong not to give up his seat to the elderly. But those elderly people were even worse...

"Giving up your seat on public transport is a voluntary act.

"How can anybody use violent means to force others to give up their seats?"

The state-owned China News Service reported that no arrests were made following the incident and the young man was not seriously injured.

Mr Pan Tianshu, an anthropologist at Fudan University, told BBC: "Instead of seeing this as just a generational war, we should see it as (the result of) increasingly limited public resources for a rapidly transforming society."

This article was first published on Sep 16, 2014.
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