ABSTRACT
On one spring day in the early 1990s in Guizhou Province, China, several nature reserve managers in a small boat on Caohai Lake were gathering fishing nets that were illegally trapping fish during the spawning season. Nature reserve managers told me that their task was to pull up the nets and destroy them as they had done on several previous occasions. Before the managers could gather the nets, however, several boats filled with irate local fishermen1 surrounded them. The fishers yanked one man out of the reserve managers’ boat and started pummeling him. The fishers then threatened to drown the other reserve employees in the icy waters of the lake. When the reserve managers tried to retreat, the fishers started throwing heavy rocks at the managers’ small boat to try to damage the boat or drown the occupants. Fortunately for the shaken reserve employees, they were able to get away. The man who had been beaten had to be hospitalized.
