May 25, 2009
A dispute over a bag lost by a customer in a Chongqing restaurant led to a planned revenge protest and ultimately the arrest of the angry customers.
After failing to settle the lost bag dispute on May 21, the Quanju restaurant in Chongqing’s Yubei District began to see a stream of customers coming in, each taking one table for long hours and ordering only the cheapest dish on the menu － fried peanuts — or just drinking beer.
The restaurant called the police after this happened three nights in a row. The seven customers eventually got five days in jail each. Curiously, according to the report, the offense was not disrupting the restaurant’s business, but that knives found in the malicious customers vehicles belongs to a restricted weapon category.
A lawyer was quoted in the article, pointing out that there is no specific legal measure to protect restaurants from this kind of customer retaliation because current consumer protection laws stipulate that customers are not subject to minimum spending standards.
In other news, the big photo on the front page shows a five-month-old baby who suffers from an advanced case of primary biliary cirrhosis. The baby girl’s father is now facing a choice whether to give part of his own liver to save his daughter. Most of the family members, including the girl’s mother, oppose the idea of the liver transplant.
Underneath the big photo, a smaller picture shows a white cat which has two wing-like appendages on the back. Given that “winged” cats are rare, experts were invited to give their views. Explanations range from a genetic mutation caused by chemical intake during the mother cat’s pregnancy to another theory that the cat is a freak that developed from two embryos, with its “wings” being the evidence.
- Chongqing Economic Times (Chinese): Retaliating customer who only order peanuts and beer were arrested in Chongqing, Freak cat, experts speculate that it is a case of genetic mutation