They just see it as a fight or a row, not as violence. A man pulls a woman by her hair across a street as she fights to keep her balance in downtown Beijing. Although seldom reported, violence against women in China is an ongoing problem. That is also why domestic violence remains frequent even though most urban Chinese live in densely-populated areas and have ample opportunity to keep watch over each other. People will usually ignore it if they hear women or children wailing next door, reasoning that their neighbours have a right to lead their lives as they want, according to Ms Yu.
Violence has to be extreme before a woman can expect help from outsiders.
When Dong Yinghua's husband broke her pelvis, she was lying in bed for days, neglected and starving. Only after she had made her way to the door of her apartment, begging people outside to go and buy food for her, were the neighbours alerted and did they force her husband to take her to hospital. Legal experts say that the institutionalised wife-beating is a product of a society that has traditionally been one of the most chauvinist in the world. Generations of Chinese women were expected to be obedient to their fathers, then their husbands, and in dotage to their sons. A man punches a woman in the head after she tried to stop him from pulling her across a street by her hair in Beijing.