Police Raid: My First Day in China

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The first person I met in China was Jenny. She worked for a school in Jinan, which was where I was supposed to complete a day of "training" before being shipped to Jining. I'm awfully glad I met Jenny. First, she was at least as tall and powerfully built as I am (although the Chinese consider me to be skinny, which is really saying something, to an American), and she openly admired my black and white hair, asking if I could help her dye hers the same (for reference, I can). And the first thing she noticed was that my suitcase was marked by a Spongebob Squarepants sticker. Both Spongebob fanatics, our hour-long trip into central Jinan was spent discussing the yellow headache and his various escapades. It was bliss, and I hope to meet her again sometime while I am still in Shandong Province.

My first experience in Jinan was rather markedly different than my first experience in Jining. First of all, I took a bus to Jining. It let me off on the curbside of an unknown city. All the passengers dispersed and melted into the general populace.

It was a cold, damp night in early April, and I stood by the side of the road, encumbered by my Spongebob-marked suitcase, backpack and purse. And THERE WAS NO ONE WAITING FOR ME. I didn't have a telephone to call for help, which was something of a problem because I was instantly surrounded by a crowd of folks. I didn't have the vocabulary at that point to tell them I was waiting for a friend, so instead (with sign language) I borrowed a phone. I called the folks in Jinan, who gave me the number of the folks in Jining. The whole time, I was accumulating an ever larger crowd of onlookers who just wanted to watch a white-haired freak with lots of luggage. One of the women was very motherly and fussed with my scarf, trying to give me maximum warmth. In all, I was very glad when my soon-to-be colleagues finally saved me by showing up in a taxi and escorting me to my new place.

In the atmosphere of cheer and good will, however, something rather critical was left out, which I was to discover the next day when I went to work for the first time.

At noon, as I was getting ready to leave for lunch, I was told not to go outside. I was told to sit inside, and wait for someone to bring me food. The owner of the school kept walking around with a worried expression and eventually but some banners in the windows by my desk. Kind of unnerving, right? Then we (meaning the Foreign Teachers) were put on lockdown. We weren't allowed to leave the building. In fact, we weren't even allowed to leave the office really, until well after 6 pm that evening.

I didn't really have any idea what was happening, and being the impervious soul that I am, didn't even realize something was amiss until someone took me aside and spelled it out for me:

Apparently, over the last month, some strange things had been happening. One day, one of my Foreign coworkers received a phone call at seven in the morning telling him to get the heck out of the apartment as quickly as possible and to go (and stay) on the outskirts of town until such time as it was safe to go back. They were expecting a police raid, you see. Before that, everyone had been cautioned to stay indoors for weeks on end. The Foreign Teachers were not to show their faces in public; to do so might mean that they disappeared and were never heard from again (or the school would be in trouble. Or something. Leeza does not know). And then, on the day I showed up, the police raided our school and we were on lockdown for eight or so hours. They stood outside till dusk, ready to nab any foreigner who stepped out of the building.

There exist such a thing in this country as "harmony fees"--do a google search. Our owner forgot to pay them, or payed them to the wrong official--with the end result that the law about not hiring foreigners until the school has been established for at least a year suddenly became valid again. What now? What did I just say? Basically that my first day here was spent under threat of arrest and imprisonment--FOR GOING TO THE SCHOOL I WAS ASSIGNED.

I was, after this point, beginning to think I was right to want to stay in Cambodia and wrong to come to China (despite previously alluded-to celestial warnings, I might add). And you know what? Seven weeks later, I stand by this. Those are seven weeks of life I ain't gettin' back, folks.

(PS--Do not worry! All issues have been resolved.)

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