No Pillow Fighting in Beijing

International Pillow Fight Day, a three-year-old event which originated in the US and has since spread to cities as far flung as Budapest, Sydney, and last year for the first time, Shanghai, is what it sounds like – a random meet-up of hundreds (or thousands) bearing pillows for a five-minute sploff with total strangers. How cute.

This year was Beijing's first attempt to join in the fun. But at 3.03 under the huge screen that covers the plaza of The Place at Guanghua Lu, who showed up? Not only a hundred-odd pillow fighters, ready for battle, but also upwards of 60 policemen who alighted from five vans, two cop cars, and an Escalade. They were quick to break up one of the most innocent gatherings imaginable.

According to one organizer from www.badcatpros.com, the Shanghai event drew not only no police attention, but actually got a few standby baoan in on the action, popping each other with borrowed pillows. Here, however, even attempts by pillow-toters to make a quick location switch were eventually foiled. Dejected revelers headed to Song for a happy hour round to soak their sadness in Tsingtao.

CCTV covered the pillow fight in New York in Monday's news bulletin.

Adriane Quinlan is one of the gals at www.pizzabuffetbeijing.com

Links and Sources:
Picassa: Images from the Pillow Flight
The Beijinger Forum: Worlwide Pillow Fight Day in Beijing: The POLICE Came
CCTV: 纽约：“枕头大战” 缓解压力 (video of the New York pillow fight from CCTV)