“Police shot a rampaging bull on a middle school campus Thursday in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.”

Photo from Tianshannet.com

While a headline like this may make the front page in any major Chinese city or practically any western city, here in Xinjiang it is merely a side blurb – an article barely worth a few paragraphs.  Nobody was killed, bull problem taken care of, folks. Everybody go back home now.

According to a more detailed Chinese article on Tianshannet.com, a man named Maimaiti (a Chinese transliteration of a Uyghur name) bought a bull at a local Urumqi market, used a few ropes to tie him to his three-wheeled motorcyle and led him home.  To his surprise the bull wasn’t quite content with this arrangement and proceeded to free himself.

Of the many people who involuntarily participated in this running of the bull, only one woman was injured.  She is in stable condition at the local hospital, which is more than can be said for the bull.  His 15 minutes of fame ended fatally to the sound of police gunfire in the middle of #43 middle school.

Personally, I love the irony of this considering that 2009 is the year of the ox.  I’m surprised that nobody else has caught onto this. I’ve had fun trying to think of alternate headlines for this crazy story.  Here’s two that I’ve come up with so far:

Livestock meandering city streets is not an uncommon sight in Xinjiang