Arrested in Helin!

Lily, Joe, Samuel, Arienne, and Grace in Helin, one hour south of Hohhot.

We were introduced to Lily by an American ESL instructor the first week we arrived. A couple days later she found me in the courtyard of our apartment building, ready to go on a bike ride with the kids. Since she doesn't speak English, she came with "Joe," her English teacher, and they asked me if I would come to their school in Helin (a small town near the mountains an hour South of Hohhot) and teach English. They actually wanted to hire me and pay me to be their English teacher. And we had only met for five minutes two days before! Apparently this kind of thing happens all the time (so I’ve now heard from other English teachers), but I didn’t have my defenses up. I was completely taken off guard. I tried to explain that I was not an English teacher by trade. This didn't deter them at all. I tried to explain that I had a job with my college in the U.S. as well as a job teaching at IMNU, and I didn't need another job. This did not deter them. Lily, who is very direct and ambitious, knew how to make her case: she said I would be helping the children greatly if I would visit the school.

I finally agreed to visit the school, but only on the condition that I would be a volunteer who helped when I could. I tried to explain that I would be teaching daily at IMNU and I needed weekends for my family as well as my own studies. But Lily was insistent: “It is not much for you, just part of every Saturday, and you would be helping the kids so much...." It was quite a give and take, with me mostly giving. I finally agreed to go to Helin on Saturday and tried to make it clear that I would determine whether I would go thereafter on a weekly basis. In fact, I was never firm enough, and for the three Saturdays that I visited Helin at least half of the hour drive south was spent wrangling over my commitment to the school.

Posing with Joe (back left) and Lilly’s father (back right) and the kids after a Kung Fu demonstration by the school children. The red banner hanging over the entrance to the school says, “Welcome Dr. David to Our School.”

You know those moments where you slap yourself and say, "Is this really happening?" That happened to me about one hundred times that first Saturday, beginning with us pulling up and seeing a giant red banner hanging across the front of the school that said, "Welcome Dr. David to Our School." After that, I needed a slap every few minutes to convince myself that all this was really happening. I was standing on a street in a small town in Inner Mongolia, television cameras running (the local news station was covering the event), watching kids in Kung-Fu outfits perform for me and my family as part of our welcoming. The moment was a bit surreal, for sure, and also kind of colonial. I felt like some nineteenth century Englishmen arriving at a village in India and receiving the red-carpet treatment from the locals. We were taken inside the school where we were seated at the front of the room and given ice cold water and watermelon. I then gave the elementary kids a one-hour English lesson, helped by Arienne who told them the story of Goldilocks, after which were taken to a restaurant, seated in a private room, and treated to a multiple course banquet. After lunch we were taken to the best hotel in the town where we rested for an hour before they took us to "South Mountain," a beautiful hill covered with trees and old Buddhist Temples, which had now been transformed into something of a Chinese theme park. We were not allowed to pay for anything, including the entrance fees to the park. The day concluded with us being taken back to Hohhot (about an hour north) by a series of buses and a private car. The day had begun at 8:30 am and ended for us back at our apartment at 8:30pm. It was an exhausting and special day. And Lily got what she wanted: after treating us with such great hospitality, how could I refuse to go back?

I learned a lot in the three trips to Helin, but most of what I learned happened on the third, and final, trip to the school. I taught the older students first, and after a short tea break, began teaching to the smaller children. About halfway through the class--around 11:00am, Lily opened the door to the classroom and pulled Joe from the class. A few minutes later, Joe returned and told me that we needed to go the police station. I was being taken in for questioning. (We found out later that some Policemen saw Samuel playing outside with some local school boys and inquired about the "waigoren." Moments later a Police van with at least five officers were taking me from the school.)

The Helin Police escorting me from the classroom, but not before I snap a photo.

Into the police van I go. Thankfully, Joe accompanied me the entire way.

The most alarming thing at first was the fact that I did not know where Samuel was and I had no time to get him a message. Lily assured me that Samuel was fine and would be taken care of and that I would be back shortly. In the police van on the way to the station, Joe tried to convince me that this was just a "small affair:" we would go to the station, "fill out some papers," and be back at the school soon. In a van full of policemen, he spoke pretty frankly, in English, about the nature of local police in China. "It's all about power," he said, "The Police in small towns are like the Emperor." "The laws of China are not yet complete, so the Police here have a lot power." This was just a "normal episode," he said, that would soon be over. These last words were somewhat comforting--and I believed him--but it is still somewhat shocking to be pulled by the police (who "have a lot of power") from a classroom where you are volunteering to teach little kids English (constituting a public threat?). This kind of thing just does not happen to innocent people in America (I can see all my lefty friends rolling their eyes), or at least it hasn't happened to me, to any of my friends, or to anyone that I've ever heard of.... I told Joe as he rode to the station that "In America, the police don't sweep into classrooms and take away teachers during the middle of lessons unless they have committed a crime." He was surprised to hear that I had never even visited a police station in America. So this was indeed a first.

For a first visit to a Chinese police station, it wasn't so bad, at least at first. No one frisked me. No one locked me up or subjected me to harsh interrogations. In fact, most of the guys (who, by the way, do not carry guns) seemed to be pretty relaxed, hanging around the station, sitting on their bunks, smoking cigarettes, reading, playing video games, laughing (weren't there any REAL CRIMINALS in the village of Helin? This was a question I tried to ask a confounded officer about three hours later when my patience had finally run thin.) Despite the jovial atmosphere, I couldn't shake a creeping sense of powerlessness and vulnerability. Here I was at a police station an hour South of Hohhot. I was separated from my little boy, who, as far as I knew, did not even know where I was (which, it turns out later, was entirely the case, because there was no one around him who spoke English. The only information he had was Lilly's cryptic message on the blackboard: WC--Go--11:30. He thought that I had gone to the bathroom for one of the longest poops ever!). I didn't have my passport or my "Foreign Experts Certificate," which no one had told me I needed to pack around with me everywhere. And although these cops weren't exactly behaving like mean thugs (at this point just jovial thugs), there is no denying that if the Police can whisk you away from a classroom with no warrant, no reading of rights, no apparent reason for their actions except to make your life miserable, there is really no limit to how miserable they could make things.

So far no one had tried to take any of my belongings, but I began to worry: what if they took my camera (which I had probably unwisely used to take a picture of being taken away from the school) or my cell phone. What then? I was particularly worried about Samuel's situation, and I didn't want to upset Arienne for nothing (if Joe was right that this was just a "small affair"). Yet, what if I didn't call Arienne and then they took my phone? As I was considering these things, Arienne called me. It was 11:30 and she figured I was done teaching. She had text-messaged me earlier (probably as I was on the way to the station) and I hadn't responded and she was starting to worry. Now she had lots of things to worry about!

The surly sergeant (left) and his protégé fold through the book of laws for foreigners searching for a law that I had violated. I thought twice before I took this, but I couldn’t resist.

The initial novelty of being "arrested" in China for teaching English to school children (as a volunteer) began to diminish after an hour turned into two hours and eventually three. The boss-man, or sergeant, was a little more surly than the average cops. He sat and morosely folded through a book of laws for foreigners, trying to find some crime that I had committed. Paperwork was also begun--toward what end I had no idea, but during the course of just over three hours, at least twenty different forms were filled out, including at least three where I confessed to being a foreigner without a passport. Indeed, the boss-man had found a law which I had violated. After perhaps forty-five minutes at the station, he put the book of laws for foreigners on Joe's lap with one rule underlined. It said that foreigners have to carry their passports at all times or be fined 500 RMB. I had indeed committed a crime.

I don’t know the exact translation, but this is the book of laws for foreigners in China.

Now more paperwork had to be completed, questions had to be answered, statements had to be signed and finger-printed. I must have signed and fingerprinted at least ten different documents, all of them, as far as I could tell from Joe's translation, essentially saying the same thing: that I had visited Helin this morning at 9:00am to teach English without pay and had left my passport at my dorm room at IMNU. This did not seem particularly damning, so I signed. I wanted to expedite the process, realizing that Samuel was probably totally unnerved by now.

Fingerprinted and not happy. Photo taken by Joe in the courtyard of the police station.

Along with paperwork, negotiations were also begun regarding the amount of the fine I would pay. In China, nothing seems to happen without regard to guanxi, or connections, which I can't really complain about, because I've been benefiting from Yongsheng's connections since I've been here. This is a great concept if you are well-connected, but it also means that each person is treated differentially within the infrastructure of Chinese power and authority--an idea that flies in the face of American notions of "blind" or equal justice. I know that American justice is not always blind, but, at that moment, I was becoming downright nostalgic for the American legal system. In our case, Lily's husband, who is a policeman in Hohhot (and, although off-duty, was wearing his uniform) tried to use his connections get me off or reduce the fine. The father of one of Lily's students is a police officer in Helin, and that connection was also used. Lily was on the phone. Her husband was talking with the officers. Joe also engaged in the conversations which sometimes turned quite animated and I would venture to say "heated." All of this dragged on and on through the lunch hour. I had not had anything to eat or drink since the cup of tea between my classes back at the school, and my patience was beginning to wear thin. I told Joe and Lilly that it was my fault that I hadn't brought my passport: "Let me pay the fine and let's go!" Everyone kept pushing the money back at me, refusing to give in. I know it was embarrassing to have their guest placed in this situation, but the impatient American just wanted to make the pay-off and get back to my boy.

It was about this time I received this pointed text message from Arienne:

"Tell Lily to shove it, pay money and get the hell out of there."

I tried to do this numerous times, even walking directly up to the surly sergeant and shoving my money at him, to the great embarrassment of both Joe and Lilly. In the end, Lily and her husband's guanxi was not enough to get me off. It was decided that I would indeed pay the fine after the paperwork was completed. That was okay by me. It was nearing 2 pm (going on three hours) and we needed to pay and go. I went to sign and fingerprint a few more documents. So far I had not lost my composure or temper. I was totally pissed off, for lack of a better term, but my strategy was to smile like a Buddhist and swear like sailor under my breath, keeping my exterior demeanor on an even keel. But while I was signing these last documents, Lily handed me a cell phone with Samuel crying on the other end. I had spoken with him about an hour earlier and he was well fed and doing fine, or so he had said. But now he had lost it, and this was my cue to lose it too. In Chinese culture, it is a major loss of face to lose one's temper, but by this time, as far as I was concerned, Chinese customs could kiss my ___. I was really angry. I said a bunch of stuff in English that most English speakers would not have understood unless they had spent two years in the Merchant Marine. I tossed my 200 RMB at an officer and stomped out of the office, no doubt delighting the officers. Then I stood in the courtyard and shouted a couple things and waited for Lily and Joe to wrap up the official proceedings.

We finally left the station about 2:15pm. We arrived back at the school and Samuel ran to meet me, tears in his eyes. He had needed to go to bathroom for about an hour but didn't know how to say it (I would have just crossed my legs and pointed at my crotch, but Samuel is much more refined than me). By this time, I was in no mood for pleasantries of any kind. I took Samuel to the bathroom (refusing the offer of a kindly old lady to take him) and then we raced across the street to buy water and some bread at the market. Lily's husband raced across and paid for our water and wouldn't let me buy the bread because they wanted to take me to lunch. It was a kind offer, but eating is a time for good feelings and toasts. I was in no mood. We went straight home to Hohhot…and we weren’t coming back.

I felt bad for Lilly and Joe for how things had gone. They were totally embarrassed and felt horrible. What happened was not their fault. At the same time, all my concerns about negotiating how many Saturdays I would teach in Hohhot had evaporated in the heat of righteous clarity. I certainly didn't have to explain to them why I wasn't coming back. I felt the worst for Samuel, who had suffered through over three hours of confusion with a bunch of people with whom he could not communicate. They had treated him well, bringing him food and drink, but it had been frustrating: he hadn't wanted most of the food they brought but couldn't say anything (now he wants a Mandarin phrasebook!)

I also felt rage towards arbitrary power and how it is wielded over people's lives--a reality that so many people around the globe live with everyday, but which middle-class Americans rarely feel. But I also felt relieved that my experience with arbitrary power was shortlived and without significant consequences. I had not suffered at all--except for missing one meal--and it was overwhelming to think that political prisoners and refugees world-wide live with this sense of powerlessness every singe day of their lives.

I also learned a few practical things:

1. Always charge our cell phones (mine had died at the police station, leaving Arienne in the dark for the last part of the saga)

2. Always bring water/snacks in the backpack

3. Always carry a passport or my "Foreign Experts Certificate."

4. Don’t take work at any other institutions (even as a volunteer) unless you are explicitly told to so by Yongsheng, Mr. Chen, or Mrs. Wu.