street food and the government, ahem

So on wednesday night, after chinese class, and after dinner, and after my usual hourlong walk back home, I met up with some fellow teachers in the cool little alley area near my place where there's a bunch of street food. It was getting towards midnight, and some of us were heading to alex's place, also very close to the street food. the others were crossing the street, and I stopped in a little hole in the wall to buy a 12 cent small-sized tapioca milk tea. I caught up with Ryan, who stopped to look at the meats and veggies on a stick, waiting to be grilled to pure deliciousness. The others were waiting on the other side of the street while ryan was deciding. He told the lady he wanted one tofu, and as she reached for the skewer to place it on the grill, the vendor next to her started shouting urgently. The woman dropped the tofu and everyone around proceeded to cart their goods away as fast as possible. I figured it was just a cop since street vendors are illegal, but we still stood there for a second a bit stunned because she dropped everything right in front of us and ran with her stuff. I turned towards the street to see what was there, and all of a sudden, there were 3 white vans whose side doors were thrown open. Swat team looking officers started streaming out, soo many of them, and ran towards the vendors. They grabbed carts and goods and threw them in the back of a rickety truck with lots of storage space. No one seemed to care about arresting anyone, just focused on getting their hands on raw street food and carts and disposing of them. Ryan and I crossed the street to where the others were, and we stood in complete shock as the scene played out. There was a huge crowd, and smoke from the little makeshift barbeques, and cops in full gear. It was so much like a 60's riot. Something you would watch on tv. So weird. Jeff went off into the middle of the street and got some pictures before he was shooed away, so maybe sometime this year I'll get a copy of those and post something. Wow. So surreal.