Beijing Police

I survived a recent brush with the law here in Beijing. I'd agreed to the 1 year deal to stay at my current job last December, but my employer failed to tell me I had to renew my work and residency papers. It turned out I was living in China and working illegally for 22 days. I had to pay an 800 U.S. dollar fine, AND I had to spend a day at a police station, which really concerned me. I expected detention, or forced labor, or waterboarding, at least.


POLICE OFFICER: Let me take a moment to explain the penalties. Once we find you guilty, we will sentence you to one day of hard labor.

ME: Wait a second! WHAT? What do you mean 'hard labor?'

OFFICER: You will be ordered to report to work, joining the farmers and other migrants who are building that Beijing skyscraper across the street. You will continue to lift bricks and mortar, weld metal, and balance on bamboo scaffolding until you either run out of phlegm-packed spit or fall to your death, whichever comes first.

ME: Don't you have something less taxing, like probation? You know, if you catch me breaking the law again, I get deported to the U. S., where I can join the first home construction project once the economy begins moving again?

OFFICER: We do not have this probation of which you speak. Everybody knows this.

ME: How about Double Secret Probation? Does anybody know about that?

OFFICER: You are lucky the farmers bought all of the plastic buckets or you would be severely waterboarded already.


My employer promised to send a Chinese legal expert to sit with me, but dispatched a cute office-worker girl to keep me company instead. This wasn't half bad; it made the threat of waterboarding seem a lot easier to handle.

It was a nervous, disturbing time, with no one bothering to translate for me what was going to happen next. I had to sign some papers that explained my guilt and my "attitude toward the offenses." It ended up being nothing worse than paying for parking tickets, and the company, to its credit, provided all the cash on the spot. I suppose I now have a criminal record in China, which should give me some serious street cred, and make me all the more irresistible to the cute Mainland babes who are already crushing on Obama.