At 22:50 the day before yesterday, near Xiangjin Street in Xigang District of Dalian City. "A group of young men and women were crawling on their knees on the road, with other young people nearby 'cheering them on,'" an informant said, "The onlookers were stunned, and the police came to maintain order." What exactly happened? The reporter immediately rushed to the scene.
The strange kneeling and crawling behavior drew a large crowd of citizens. Eyewitnesses said that the poorly lit incident location caused them to be startled when they suddenly saw a group of men and women crawling on their knees.
At 23:10 the previous night, after circling around Xiangjin Street several times, the reporter couldn't find any trace of this group. An informant said they might have gone to another place. During the search, the reporter spotted a police car. Two officers standing beside the police car told the reporter that indeed there was a group of people crawling on their knees here, but after being persuaded by the police, they had dispersed.
According to the police, initially, the police received a report claiming "in the middle of the night, some people were performing strange acts on the road." Subsequently, the police arrived at the scene and found a group of young people kneeling on the road, using their hands to crawl forward.
Many eyewitnesses reported that there were 1 woman and 7 men crawling. "The woman is about 30 years old and was at the front, followed by seven men in their early twenties," an eyewitness said. Behind the seven men formed two "groups", four at the front, three at the back. The officer said one of the men was shirtless while crawling. More perplexingly, there was another group of young people standing next to the eight crawling individuals. This led some residents to speculate, "Could these eight people have been forced to crawl on their knees?"
The crawlers claimed it was "voluntary."
Some passersby asked, but this group of young people remained silent. Eyewitness Mr. Liu said, could these young people be seeking publicity through such a method? Citizen Ms. Bao, however, had a different opinion: "It's often said that a man’s knee is worth more than gold, and it's the same for women. Regardless of the reason, one should always retain a bit of dignity."
So, what exactly were they doing? The officer said the crawlers all claimed, "No one forced us to crawl on our knees, we did it voluntarily." The officer added that they likely came from a local hair salon in the city, seemingly having encountered some issues at work, hence conducting this "self-motivating" act.
Since the crawlers claimed it was "voluntary," the police couldn't excessively interfere. However, the crawling behavior might affect traffic, and passing vehicles might also endanger the crawlers. Therefore, the police conducted persuasion. At 23:30 the previous night, when the reporter left, the two officers were still stationed at the scene.
The store side: We are "breaking through ourselves"
The reporter contacted the hair salon yesterday. The leading woman who knelt and crawled said that the crawlers were all employees and apprentices of the hair salon. "Because of poor performance, we came up with this idea, adopting a way to break through ourselves," the woman said. Throughout the process, everyone's mood was pretty good, and the preliminary goal of team-building was achieved. After multiple confirmations, the kneeling and crawling lasted at least 15 minutes. Regarding the distance crawled, some said it was at least three or four hundred meters, "Crawled across two streets." But the leading woman said, "We only crawled about thirty or forty meters." Regarding the attention they drew, the leading woman said, "Our internal team response was quite good. At the time, considering the social impact, we chose to conduct training late at night. Unexpectedly, it still caught the attention of the police and citizens." The woman said somewhat embarrassedly. Reporter Man Wenfei