I witnessed a “fight” about a year ago, here are my recollections:

I was waiting for a friend outside the Kempinski in Beijing, a well-known 5 star hotel with an adjoined high-end shopping mall. As I was waiting, a guy started chasing a woman into the parking lot, he was shouting at her but I could not make out what he was saying. He then started pulling her aggressively by the hand trying to pull her in the direction they came from. At this point it was starting to get violent, but the 4 or so security guards and several parking attendants simply ignored what was happening under their noses. I was a little reluctant to get involved as I didn’t feel my Chinese was good enough to handle the situation. A few seconds later the man grabbed the woman by her scarf and pulled her face down into the pavement, where she remained motionless.

At that point I started running over there and just started screaming randomly into the air trying to get people involved. One old Taitai later joined me and started shouting at the guards to do something. At this point the aggressor has already realized he has gone too far and backed off.

Approximately 5 minutes later the police arrived, and made the aggressor and the woman “tan shi’r” or discuss the situation… no arrests were made to the best of my knowledge. All I know is that the guy was a taxi driver and the woman hit his car with her bicycle…