Mick Hartley

It was a dramatic weekend in the relatively small city of Shishou in Hubei province.
Tens of thousands of rioters torched a hotel and overturned police cars, accusing the authorities of trying to cover up the murder of a 24-year-old man as a suicide.

The deceased, Tu Yuangao, was the chef of the Yong Long hotel. According to the cops, he committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the building and left a note.

However, witnesses said there was no blood on the scene and Tu’s body was already cold just after it hit the ground. His parents were surprised that he left a suicide note, since he was allegedly illiterate….

It’s a strange story, and it gets stranger. A huge mob, of anywhere between a few thousand to 70,000 people, depending on which report you read, quickly gathered outside the building to protect the body. Tu’s parents refused to let his corpse be taken away, claiming that it held vital evidence of the crime, and instead placed it inside the hotel on ice.

The crowd beat back waves of policemen. On Saturday, someone lit a fire inside the hotel, possibly to destroy the body, but it was saved.

Tu’s cousin apparently then armed himself with two barrels of gasoline and threatened to blow himself up if the body was taken.

The police restored order yesterday, imposed a curfew and took the corpse to a funeral parlour. There is still a lot of anger, however, and the website of the local government has been defaced by hackers.

What’s extraordinary is the speed in which the riot blew up, and the venom directed against the local authorities. Whatever was behind Tu’s death, there’s clearly something rotten in Shishou.

After months of calm, there have recently been a spate of riots being reported in the Chinese media, or on the internet.

Is this because media restrictions have been lifted, allowing news of riots to spread, or has there been a genuine increase in social tension in the countryside?