scary behaviour

I just spent the morning doing a bit of shopping in the old city part of Suzhou. I was very disturbed to hear across the street two men arguing and then one of the men hitting the older man in the head, then kicking him in his back and attacking him further by punching him while on the ground. The perpertrator appeared to be a 'door man' some sort of security type person out the front of a hotel or office. The guy he was beating up was an older man who looked to be delivering water bottles on his bike. I was inside another shop across the road when this happened, buying a DVD and had to watch helpless as this all happened. Many others outside were watching, but clearly no one wanted to get involved. My Chinese is very limited and I would not have been able to find out what it was about anyway. It was very distressing to see, and I felt really sorry for the old man and annoyed at the man who did this. In my view violence is never acceptable and seeing this incident unfold was sickening. The victim walked away yelling out stuff, but it made me think about the differences in wealth, status and position that this country is already experiencing on a large scale.

There are many poor country people who take jobs in wealthy cities like Suzhou and work 6-7 days a week for on average 12 hours a day. Many labourers do this while building all the massive skyscrapers and apartments and they are usually accommodated together in small rooms with about 6 bunks. It's no life.