China Executes Brit

[bailewen]

CDobe,

Point taken about Turkey. Come a long way in the past 20 or 30 years.

Darth,

Glad to hear they got pulled but it really doesn't change much as I actually already agree with you that they were not the real problem. The problem, IMO, is just subcontracting out the government work in general. The neo-cons have been screaming so loud for so many years about how "the government fucks up everything they touch" and how privatization is the solution to everything from from the common cold to ending world hunger that we have even privatized our military operations. Our contractors have subcontracted out to people who subcontracted the work out. There's no accountability or even traceability. The whole operation has pretty much bankrupted our country. For the money we've flushed down the toilet on this Iraq thing we could have purchased national health insurance several times over.

[Michael]

That said, everyone I knew who had spent more than a year or two living in the Middle Kingdom had known someone who simply disappeared.

For anyone reading this considering an extended stay in China (Alexander, perhaps) for teaching English, MA study, whatever, do NOT enter a Chinese hospital of any size (although I would be wary of even small clinics) without a friend who stays with you the entire time and makes his presence known. In additon to those who just disappear as meeks and Peacedog described, there are also those who go into a Chinese hospital for an in-grown toenail and are dead the next day.

[jasonf]

That said, everyone I knew who had spent more than a year or two living in the Middle Kingdom had known someone who simply disappeared.

For anyone reading this considering an extended stay in China (Alexander, perhaps) for teaching English, MA study, whatever, do NOT enter a Chinese hospital of any size (although I would be wary of even small clinics) without a friend who stays with you the entire time and makes his presence known. In additon to those who just disappear as meeks and Peacedog described, there are also those who go into a Chinese hospital for an in-grown toenail and are dead the next day.

I lived in China for 2 years and never heard of anyone disappearing, I've been in more than one Chinese hospital. I think what Michael said is total fear mongering. Total nonesense.

[meeks]

[rant]jasonf - I congratulate you on your good fortune to have had a safe journey in China. But if you think for one minute that I'm fear mongering when I've personally witnessed some of what I spoke of and have met people who were killed and have 2 cousins living in China for the last 20 years that tell me about all the disappearances, extortion and other BS - you're a complete fucking idiot who's giving a false sense of security out of ignorance. Just keep your head down and don't speak. You'll save lives. You're only response should have been "wow - I've been fortunate". Not "you're full of shit", fearmongerer.[/rant]

[meeks]

things I have personally witnessed:
extortion. where either cops or gangs come to your office and you eventually pay a fee for them to go away.
rapes where no one did a thing because the guy doing the rape was an official or a cop
beatings with the electric batons from cops because the hooker wouldn't pay a fee
a butcher hacking up 2 cops because they were extorting him.
my friend's driver from the factory going to prison for rape because he didn't have the 10k RMB (about $1200 USD) to pay the husband after he had his wife sleep with the driver.
another friend slept with his housekeeper and the next day the husband was there with 6 guys demanding money for 'raping' her.
2 of the foreign factory owners disappeared without a trace. One on his way to the airport in a taxi. One in the middle of the night when a 'mien bao che' (white van) pulled up with guys with machine guns and took him away - they also emptied the safe. The guard at the gate simply opened the gate - he only gets $60 USD a month so he's basically an automatic door opener when the guns arrive.
friend's wife was raped repeatedly at a KTV (karaoke) in one of the private party rooms - she was coming back from the washroom and some chinese guys pulled her into the room (she was also chinese) and they gang raped her. The management refused to call the police because they didn't want any trouble. They simply told my friend's party to leave.
another friend of mine owned a factory (he's HongKong chinese) and they tried to extort him. He basically had to change his phone, his driver, his schedule and move his whole factory to a new town.
our translator at the factory I first worked at was fired. He called and threatened to extort lots and lots of money out of my friend who owned the factory. we called the police and they said "just do what we do - take him in the middle of nowhere and kick the shit out of him until he no longer threatens anyone". Eventually he came back with a truckload of friends and tried to extort my friend. so we made some phone calls and a truckload of our friends arrived. then they called more people (and they arrived), and so did our guys. Long story short - the translator no longer translates.
I was in a taxi in the factory districts (not in the city) one night and my driver picks up a guy in the middle of nowhere on the freeway. But I could tell they knew each other. So I called my chinese friends at the factory and repeated the license plate number on the taxi (the driver didn't have an ID displayed this time) so the driver knew if I disappeared they'd be traced...there's a history of guys disappearing in taxis on the freeway on the way to/from the factories...the taxi gets pulled over by a couple of guys with machetes, they open the back door of the cab...the passenger gets hacked to bits until he coughs up his wallet and then they dump his body in the field at roadside to die or live to tell about it. When most of these guys make $30-$70 USD a month you've usually got a couple of years salary in your wallet when you are returning from or going on a trip.
in a car with my coworkers one night (in the city) and we come to a sudden stop. Guy on a bicycle rides into us, falls over and starts demanding compensation...a stupid amount..something like $5000 RMB ($650 USD) . they start arguing about it. I get out of the car and send the guy's bike flying across the road - he goes chasing after it...problem solved.
During SARS - how did the govt deal with it? People disappeared. Many people got sick and survived. If you had a factory and 1 worker got SARS your whole factory was shut down. By this I mean they locked your gates and didn't let you out until either everyone was cured or dead. Your factory was never allowed to do business again either. So a couple of factory owner friends of mine simply locked up their factories and held their workers 'captive' - preventing them from going out and getting SARS from other people. But they kept working, played badminton in their free time within the gates, and his factory never got shut down.
In Wuhan - people were bombing KFC restaurants because it was 'foreign enterprise' - despite the fact they were chinese owned franchises. That never made the news even in Wuhan although a friend of mine did send me a link from Yahoo news about it which I confirmed for him.

Things that my friends have witnessed:
girl got her hand cut off outside of Bai Jia (department store in Guangzhou) with a machete because they wanted her purse. She's standing there screaming, hand on the ground, while people just walked around her and ignored her situation. He was on my floor hockey team. That's when I'd had enough and 2 weeks later I was back in Canada.

Gangs in Beijing using machine guns to hold up the subway trains. They get on the trains, take everyone's money, jewelry, phones and rape a few chinese girls. This never makes the news, but apparently it's a couple times a week for a couple months. Then 1 day they rape a foreign woman. 3 days later the whole gang is 'caught' and it never happens again. This was told to me by EF member Tomasz when I was visiting him in Beijing over a few beers. This sort of thing doesn't make the news because they want their drones to think everything is fine on 'the Island'.

the list goes on....I've just gotten tired of typing. And it's not 'happy' to be dredging this shit up out of my memory.

for those of you that have had a good experience in China - I congratulate you and I'm thankful that you've been safe - ignorance is bliss *takes a soulful bite of the filet mignon while sitting across from Agent Smith*. But don't ever try to argue that it doesn't happen - you don't have a leg to stand on.

[jasonf]

To be honest I hadn't read your posts, my comment was in regards to Michaels comment.
Telling someone to never step foot in a Chinese hospital, in my opinion is bullshit.
Maybe we have a different deffinition of witnessed. All but two of your stories were based on a friend, not something you witnessed. Corruption and extortion is a major problem in China, if you don't like it there are plenty of agents willing to do your business there for a fee.
It sucks that you've experienced or been told about so many horrible things, but I disagree that it is the norm and I don't appreciate being called ignorant for saying so.
Based on personal experience I can say 100% that I have never had a problem in a Chinese hospital, I have never been assualted or been subject to extortion. I encourage all to live based on your personal experience and judge for yourself.

[bailewen]

Going on 10 years here myself. Also only heard about such horror stories from the internet. Guangzhou is kind of famous for the crime there but the rest of the stuff I hear about is mostly Chinese on Chinese crime. Corrupt government officials and so on. Other than pickpockets, none of my ex-pat friends in Xi'an have ever shared such stories either.

I try to steer clear of the hospitals too but again, my own experiences have been pretty positive.

[Peacedog]

Interesting follow on posts. Meeks, as usual, thank you for the voice of experience.

This is my point.

China is a great country. All of us here have some form of attachment to it be that cultural, heritage, familial, business or martial.

The penalty for bad judgement is quite severe and usually more so than in the places many of us come from.

Go to China, learn a lot, enjoy yourself, but always keep in mind that you are in a foreign country with different rules that those of your home nation.

Best of luck.

Peacedog out...

[Michael]

Bailewen is in Xi'an, jasonf spent time in Shanghai, and meeks was in Wuhan and Guangzhou like me. Maybe it's a Guangzhou thing? Still sound advice to take a friend with you on a visit to a Chinese hospital. At the very least, they can do all the leg work of running the papers and money around while you wait for the doctor.

[meeks]

a lot of that happened outside of Shenzhen. truth is once you get out of the cities into the factory areas there is no 'law'.

re-read my post - all but 2 of those were my own experience where I was present or at the scene later while things were getting mopped up - not just rumor. What gives me a lot more insight was I'm not an english teacher going into China where the staff says "china nummah 1" to me all day. I was working with factories owned by guys that had lived there 5-25 years and had seen it all and taught me a lot about how to survive outside the cities. That includes 2 of my cousins that brought me there in the first place. I didn't even get into their experiences. We weren't in a city where there's a smackload of foreigh english teachers and no one gave a crap when tehy saw you other than to treat you like a parrot "ha lou! ha lou!!" (hello) when they saw you. This was where we drove 15 minutes into a small town to order some supplies and when we offered a delivery address the clerk says "don't need it - everyone knows where you gui lao live". it's about 2 degrees of separation to find someone connected with gangs of some sort in China and it was very noticable. you might be able to trust the person you go out for beers with, but you've no idea who knows they hang out with you and puts a gun to their head when you're not around saying "tell me everything you know about those white guys"

[bailewen]

Well if you head out into some factory miles away from the nearest city with a smackload of English teachers, that's a very small slice of China and one that is, as you yourself pointed out, extremely far away from where yer average tourist or seasonal ESL teacher is going to live. You may as well try and scare people off of San Francisco with tales form the crypt...er... from the crib....er....I mean tenderloin. The state of life in the Tenderloin or even on Lower Haight just isn't very relevant to a tourist in North Beach or a college student out in the Sunset or up in the Richmond.

I don't live on campus either. Until just this year I was living in what was generally referred to by the locals as a regular den of thieves. Terrible reputation. Also completely safe IMO for foreigners. If any of you have been to Xi'an I'm talking about "Wu Jia Fen" aka "Cheng yan bao" just west of the foreign language University. Get out to the countryside and it's also extremely safe. I'm not talking about manufacturing. I mean like out where the peasants grow wheat and shit. My experience out there is that you don't even have to worry about pickpockets and petty theft as much. I don't get the "hallo" shouting and rampant rip off prices. As far as gangs in Xi'an, just don't waste your time in the discos and you'll be fine. . . unless you want to compete in the martial arts circuit because there's probably lots of criminality in those circles....along with plenty of straight arrows.

I hear plenty of horror stories from the in-laws as some of them are actually in law enforcement but it all strikes me as not particularly different from what I grew up with in the states. There's bad parts of town and good ones.

I'd agree about the hospitals I guess. I won't go in a clinic unless I am on deaths door. . . that was just a couple months ago. (was running a 104-105 degree fever for 4 days straight combined with a sore throat making it hard to drink)The experience was totally positive but then, I was accompanied by my wife and a family member of hers who works for the PSB so . . . The main terrifying thing about the hospitals is the sanitation...or lack thereof. The needles are all disposable but the meds are often not stored right. Even if they're refrigerated at the hospital, there's been a number of news exposes (online only) showing stuff like antibiotics being either shipped or stored without refrigeration in the summer when it's over 100 degrees.