Al fresco peeing incident leaves Shanghai resident braindead

The next time you fall out of a bar at three in the morning and opt to relieve yourself in a nearby doorway before embarking on the ride home, you might want to have a quick glance around to make sure that none of the Taopu District Urban Management Team are watching you. Shanghai resident Li Binghao learnt this the hard way ... and he wasn't even the guy who was peeing in public.

Last week, Li intervened to help his friend who had been urinating behind a car after lunching at a Taopu restaurant. Set upon by several members of the Taopu Urban Management team after being ordered to stop, the perpetrator, Li’s friend, found himself outnumbered at which point Li came to his defence. But his efforts were in vain, and he suffered a severe beating at the hands of the urban watchdogs -- whose job, one might assume, was to protect the local urban environment, including the people in it -- a beating that has left him a vegetable.

According to his wife, Li was unconscious by the end of the fight, and sent to hospital by the police, where he was pronounced braindead the following day. One member of the team has been detained in custody, and police investigations are ongoing.

The Shanghai Daily headline for this story -- "Public peeing fight leaves one man brain dead" -- had us expecting something entirely different.