Work Related Hazards

An unusual thing happened to me the other day while out shooting the "3 Bans and 4 No's for the Chengguan" story here in Beijing. I was shooting b-roll of Beijing street vendors on a pedestrian overpass. A young boy walked by carrying his goods and table (see above) and I panned to film him as he walked down the stairs. A nice shot I thought showing how portable their stuff needs to be in order to pack up and be gone at a moment's notice.
Instead of continuing down the stairs though, he carefully put down his stuff, turned around and pulled out a switchblade. Then he slowly came at me. In all the places I've photographed around the world some people have gotten agressive and yelled at me to stop photographing. It happens and there is a gray line where you have to decide if it is worth what you're shooting or if you've crossed the line and are being a jerk. I didn't think I crossed that line here, but it seemed he strongly disagreed.
What was a bit scary about this day and this boy was that he very calmly pulled out his knife and came at me with real determination. No yelling, no emotion, just a look of "hey a-hole, i don't appreciate you filming me and now I'd like to stab you."
Long-time photojournalist Sharron Lovell was surprised and said it was quite rare for someone to do that in China. Lucky me. If they did pull out a knife in public, then it's very serious, she said, as it isn't done for show or as a bluff. They probably intend on using it.
As soon as I heard the blade click out, a motion he made so natural, and realized "holy shit, this kid is going to stab me," the old English teacher in me came out. I turned off and lowered the camera (something in hindsight I think I should have left rolling) and yelled in broken Mandarin, "Ni gun shenma!?" -- "What are you doing?" The other vendors and passersby turned their heads but said nothing, a common occurrence in China. On a side note, while in Northeastern China (Jilin Province) I had a large beer bottle thrown at me while just walking down the street. He was an old crazy looking man. The bottle broke at my feet and a huge crowd formed around me and the crazy guy, something akin to the Indiana Jones scene where the guy had a sword and Jones shot him was running through my head. Everyone gathered around to see what the Yanguizhe (foreign devil) would do. A rare silence fell on the crowd. Time screeched to a crawl. Two options popped into my head, fight or flight. I stood there thinking a Chinese person would come to my aid, yell at the old man and maybe even apologize to me for what happened. This was not going to happen so I slowly turned around and pushed my way out of the crowd.
Back to the story, I said as sternly as I could, "Jiega shur hao ma?" "Is that good (what you're doing)?" I'm not sure why, but this made him stop. He turned around and put his knife back in his pocket. I asked him "Nida mingzhe shur shenma?" "What's your name?" He said something. I walked down the stairs put my head close to his and asked him politely again. He turned back into a nice young boy and answered. I introduced myself and pulled out my big camera and showed it to him. I asked him to take it and look into the viewfinder to take a photo. He did but said he didn't understand how to use it. I showed him how. He smiled and in a small way became friends.
After he finished setting up his table and goods down the stairs he came back up to see what it was we were doing. I kept an eye on him as my paranoid self imagined him stabbing me from behind saying "Don't ever point that camera at me again foreigner!" But he didn't of course. He found out that we were doing a story about the police that come and harass and sometimes abuse people like him and I think in some small way be became comrades.