Dong Li

“Fair peace becomes men; ferocious anger belongs to beasts.”

—Ovid

By Alex P. Vidal

WITHOUT looking at her face, the name already evokes fear and terror: Dong Li (not a feminine-sounding name). 

But she is neither elderly Shaolin “Master Dong” nor menacing sumo wrestler “Ba Dong.”

Dong Li is a 27-year-old Chinese woman who lives in Makati City, and who earned notoriety after the video showing her beating up several traffic officers and a biker in an unprovoked attack recently went viral. 

At first glance, it looked like another case of an irate and recalcitrant female pedestrian hammering away at uniformed men after being accosted for not wearing a mask in public amid the pandemic.

But when she started hitting the cars with an umbrella like a golf player and giving the terrified traffic men eagle-claw chops like a participant in the Dancing with the Stars show, it became apparent a circus madwoman was on the loose and needed to be restrained by a superior force.

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But Dong Li wasn’t a pushover. 

No “superior” force from her macho victims could tame the unruly vixen. 

Even the bystanders were too frightened to interrupt Godzilla’s wrath.    

Her weight and size, her astonishing reflexes, were already lethal weapons.

The way Dong Li utilized them to execute her brutality and sadistic skills could qualify her to the Tokyo Olympic Games discus throw and weightlifting pre-qualifying rounds. 

There could be four reasons why Dong Li went berserk by using an umbrella, punches, and kicks to singlehandedly manhandle her all-male victims before a horrified public.

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Either she was high on illegal drugs or intoxicated; she had a mental problem and wasn’t supposed to leave her house that afternoon; she was doing a prank video, which is a fad nowadays; or she thought the Philippines was already a province of China, thus it’s an “open season” to harass and mistreat the new “second-class citizens” and get away with it.

Dong Li must have taken some cue from the presidential speeches where subservience to China has always been a dominant mantra.    

It’s good Dong Li finally landed in the calaboose after she appeared to have vanished a few moments after pulverizing the traffic enforcers one after another. 

She was lucky it happened in broad daylight and nobody dared to stop her on her tracks with a single blow on the chin or a Chuck Norris-roundhouse kick in the abdomen. 

Or even worse than that.  

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LOOK WHO’S DANCING. Instead of always enticing our children to dance the way Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque wanted them to as an act of escapism, let’s instead expose our youngsters to science and technology.

We need more scientists in this modern age; we are now living in the world of 5G and space travel technology.

We need to advance; we need to take two steps forward and not to stagnate and deteriorate as “Tiktok” dancers.

When the aliens invade us one day, what shall we do to defend ourselves?

Dance the hula hoop?

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)