Chinese Players Take World of Warcraft Offline, Set Up "WOW Hunting Park"
A friend is an investigative reporter for a leading business magazine in China. One of his beats is coal mining, which takes him frequently to Shanxi province. I took him drinking earlier this week and he told me a crazy story, one that his magazine said would never get past the censors.
Coal mining is a terrifically profitable but horribly dangerous business here. There are thousands of illegal mines around the country, some no more than holes in the ground, and thousands of miners die in accidents every year. But the miners keep going into the earth because the jobs pay far better than anything else they can find in their impoverished counties and villages. These men can make up to 5,000 RMB a month, a small fortune for them, and if they are killed they can generally expect their families to receive at least 50,000 RMB in compensation. The mine bosses are among the richest of China's nouveaux riches, swimming in cash they they spend on mistresses, gaudy jewelry, multiple Hummers, Range Rovers and real estate in Beijing and Shanghai.
My friend recently interviewed two brothers from a coal mining village in Shanxi. They had fled their town to petition the authorities in Beijing. (Many people come to Beijing to petition the central government about local corruption and injustices, and complaints about mine safety are quite common.) But the two brothers, surnamed Chen (I have changed all names to protect identities), came with a new and terrifying complaint. But when they approached the central petition office, they saw thugs from the hometown, clearly there to prevent them from making any petition. They fled, and through a friend of a cousin got the phone number of my reporter friend; they knew that if they could somehow get the attention of someone in the central government they would have a good chance at justice. Here is the story, abridged for translation.
Mine Boss Wu had become addicted to an online MMORPG game called World of Warcraft. He was the leader of a guild called Kuangzhu, which consisted of 15 other Shanxi mine owners. They had all reached level 60 in WOW and had gotten bored waiting for the Burning Crusades expansion pack. They tried other games, but nothing came close to the thrill of a good WOW raid and a successful boss-kill. The group got together in person monthly, in part to discuss common business issues but mostly to drink and recount their glorious WOW exploits. These were men who all had blood on their hands, who had made their fortunes off the backs of dead and maimed miners, but they got their jollies from killing virtual orcs!! At one of their monthly meetings Boss Wu suggested they take World of Warcraft offline. "I have a 1000 mu plot of land, thick with trees. Why not play out our WOW exploits in real life?"
That is how their WOW club got started (As far as I know the club has no official relationship with The9, the Chinese operator of WOW, or with Blizzard/Vivendi, the original developer of WOW.) They met every month at Boss Wu's plot, renamed WOW Park, dressed in faux WOW attire ordered from Taobao, carrying real swords and maces they had had made at a local metal shop. All fun and good, and probably something that lots of foreigners do when they get bored with their virtual worlds. But these animals decided to go all the way. As Boss Wu said, "we pay miners 30-50,000 RMB a year, and 50-100,000 RMB when they get killed. Why not offer them 250,000 RMB to let us hunt them down in our WOW Park? If they can survive the day without being killed we pay them the money, and if we catch them we pay their families." Sadly, these mine bosses understood the desperation of their workers well, and they knew that for those sums there would be no shortage of volunteers.
The Brothers Chen did not volunteer. A cousin did, and survived. Another one, seeing how quickly he could make 250,000 RMB, went into WOW Park but never returned. The surviving cousin explained how the hunt worked:
"The bosses showed up in their Hummers and Range Rovers at 7AM. We [the prey; there were always at least three] were told to go into the park. They told us they would give us a one hour head start, and that we were to try to stay alive until dusk, at which point we would be allowed to go home. If we injured one of the players we would be killed and forfeit any payments to our families. We signed contracts explaining the rules and the fees: 250,000 RMB to us if we survived, 250,000 RMB to our families if we did not. The village chief, who got 10% of our winnings, verified the contracts. We then handed them to the family members who had accompanied us, said goodbye, and ran into the park. The bosses had all the advantages, riding on horseback and knowing the terrain, but I had spent a lot of time in the countryside as a boy, could run fast, and had a few tricks up my sleeves. I decided not to stay with the other two. They seemed weak and scared. Sure enough, within 3 hours I heard two bloodcurdling screams and knew they were done for. But I made it, they paid me my money in cash, swore me to secrecy, and let me go home."
But the cousin did not keep silent. He bragged one too many drunken times, and one morning he just disappeared. The brothers knew what had happened. They were sick of seeing so many of their villagers go into WOW Park and never return, but they knew they could get no justice in their hometown. So they made the trip to Beijing.
As they explained to my reporter friend when asked why the came to Beijing: "We have heard about a harmonious society. It sounds great and we want to help build it. We came to Beijing to find out where it is."
[Note the date of publication. This is an April Fool's post.]
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