I have gone to great lengths to cover social unrest in China, from striking factory workers in the southern city of Shenzhen to teachers’ protests in the north. Last month, for a change, I found myself in the middle of a “not in my backyard” protest in my residential compound in Beijing, pitting millionaire property owners against a gym owner and his staff.
The Seasons Park uprising of July 2016 began with a social media chat group whose members called themselves the La Mas, or Spicy Mamas.
For years the Spicy Mamas, many of them owners of flats worth more than $1m, obsessed over rich-people problems such as how much to pay the a’yis, or aunties, who clean their kitchens and raise their children. Then an entrepreneur tried to open a gym in our compound’s vacant clubhouse facility, which had been closed for almost two years.