New | Residents battling rogue management firms learn martial arts to fend off paid thugs

Residents in the satellite town of Yanjiao, Hebei province, have taken up the ancient Chinese martial art of wing chun to protect themselves from armed thugs hired by a rogue property management firm to intimidate them.

Located at the nexus of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei triangle, Yanjiao, a mere 35 kilometres from Tiananmen Square, is in something of an administrative “limbo zone”. Proximate to Beijing but under Hebei’s jurisdiction, its apparent status as a grey area has led to a lack in government oversight.

“We were afraid [of the thugs], we didn’t have any experience in fighting back,” tenant Ren Yongmei told the newspaper.

Unprotected by authorities, residents came up with an innovative way of (literally) fighting back: by learning a 2,000-year-old martial art. In August, tenants enlisted local wing chun enthusiast Ma Lianhua to them how to defend themselves.

This plan did not go unnoticed by the property developers, and after Ma began teaching classes, he was viciously beaten by a number of armed thugs.