This Generation (11 page)

That Monday my friend and I drove to Handan, where we picked up a contact from public security and went together to the Handan reformatory. But the chief refused to release his prisoner under any circumstances, saying our paperwork was incomplete: The application for release had to come directly from his family, with a stamp from his home police station; a hospital had to supply a medical certificate, and thirty thousand yuan in guarantor's deposit and over three thousand yuan in stipend had to be provided. We would have to go back to Shijiazhuang to attend to the paperwork and ask the friend's wife to come to Handan.

Later we heard that this chief warden had actually been relieved
of his duties, and he remained in charge simply because his replacement had not yet arrived. This was his last chance to line his pockets, so he wasn't prepared to cut us any slack. Apparently his wife ran the reformatory store, which sold fake goods and was very expensive, and visitors were required to buy stuff there rather than bring things in from outside.

On Wednesday afternoon, we met the friend's wife at Handan airport, and the following morning picked up our contact and went to the reformatory. This time we had paperwork, a family member, and money, so everything went fairly smoothly and my friend was released. That afternoon we returned to Shijiazhuang, where my friend bought some clothes and had a shower. After dinner we took them to Shijiazhuang airport and I went straight on to Beijing.

Appendix: Expenses incurred in playing the Get Out of Jail Not-So-Free Card

This blog post tells us a number of things:

1. This friend broke a law, and what he violated was the first article in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, namely: If we say you've broken the law, you've broken the law.

2. In addition, this friend violated the first article in the “Public Security Management Law”: to pay for sex with a prostitute in a business that has failed to pay its protection fee to Public Security or other government department will be sentenced to ten to fifteen days of detention and a fine of up to five thousand yuan; in less serious cases, detention may not exceed five days and the fine may not exceed five hundred yuan. One who pays for sex with a prostitute in an unauthorized sex business within half a mile of a sex business operating in coordination with a government agency will be punished with one month of reform through labor, and the unauthorized sex business is to be punished in accordance with procedures governing businesses that violate the “People's Republic of China Law on Unacceptable Competition.” To pay for sex with a prostitute within twenty miles of Tiananmen will be punished with three months' reform through labor; sex with a prostitute at the end of the year when the relevant departments have yet to fulfill their quota will be punished with six months' reform through labor.

3. This friend really messed up. For 120,000 yuan, he could have 2,400 happy-ending massages in a “salon,” or 1,200 dates with a streetwalker, or 800 sessions with a “hair stylist,” or 240 full-services in a spa, or 150 deluxe saunas in a big city, or 120 college students selling it on the side, or 100 foreign babes, or 50 wannabe models, or 12 starlets, or 2.5 not-quite-prime-time anchor women. . . .  When you think of the bill this man racked up, no wonder they say that women dread wedding the wrong bod and men dread bedding the wrong broad.

4. You need to be careful about doing stuff at the end of the year. What's normally legal becomes illegal then because the police have a quota to fill.

5. You need to be careful, too, about whoring in Beijing. If you fancy yourself a metrosexual, it's best to hang out in a city that's both metro and sexual. Other metropolitan areas do a better job of combining those two qualities.

6. If prostitution were ever legalized, it would be impossible to collect protection money, connection money, assistance money, and getting-out-of-jail money. So prostitution cannot be legalized; the only places it is legal are those that have paid the government protection money.

7. Some people are under the impression that fifteen days' detention is all you get for sleeping with a prostitute, but it's possible to end up with six months' re-education. If you're engaged in a threesome when they catch you, I'm told you may be charged with sponsoring an orgy and sentenced to five years. Friends with a taste for this kind of entertainment would be wise to select the venue with care.

8. Some innocent souls may say, “Let's treat all cases the same way and hand out a six-month sentence to everyone who's had sex with prostitutes.” But be sure to whisper that, for if God should ever hear your prayer, when you wake up the next day you'll find that the vast majority of male authors, businessmen, singers, actors, athletes, directors, and officials are out of circulation—and that includes prison governors and wardens of correctional facilities. Of the eighty million Communist Party members there will be only 20,080,000 left, and of those, all but 80,000 will be women. If you turn on the TV there will be no programs and if you turn on the computer there will be no news updates, and practically all the men on the Forbes list of millionaires will have disappeared as well. Worst of all, you won't be able to find your dad. Perhaps some male readers will ask: Well, what
about you—are we going to see
you
? But you guys will be nowhere to be seen, so how will you be able to ask me?

9. You shouldn't laugh at this poor fellow's misfortunes. Maybe you won't be arrested for consorting with prostitutes, but there's always a chance that one day you'll be the one who's desperate to get bailed out.

February 11, 2009

Beijing Public Security has now
established, I'm relieved to hear, that the fire at the CCTV headquarters was not some mysterious case of spontaneous combustion, nor was it accidentally sparked by neighborhood residents setting off firecrackers or by part-time workers smoking tobacco, but was caused by CCTV itself fooling around with celebratory pyrotechnics—it set fire to itself, in other words.
¹²
The only upsetting thing is that fireman Zhang Jianyong gave his life fighting the flames, otherwise the whole thing would be pure comedy.

Later, CCTV issued an apology, blaming the fire on a certain office manager who, acting without authorization from his superiors,
set off fireworks in violation of the rules. Thus was unveiled the most firework-loving office manager in all of human history: The computer-controlled release of a million-yuan's worth of fireworks and its filming by multiple video cameras were all the work of a single man. If it was not authorized by his superiors, then I guess he must have done it all at his own expense, unless at CCTV an office manager doesn't need approval to set off a million-yuan's worth of fireworks, this being such a minor expenditure.

Neither of these explanations holds water, of course: It's obvious that upper-level administrators are desperate to pin all responsibility on this office manager. “Hey, brother,” they say, “just go off to jail like a good fellow. Rest at ease: We'll support your parents and provide for your children—and we'll give your wife our attention, too.”

The fireworks display was clearly intended for screening in some future TV production, as a sequence in a feature about the new CCTV headquarters, or for use after that evening's broadcast of the Lantern Festival Gala, when they could wow viewers with the awesome sight of fireworks illuminating the famous “Underpants”—the main building in the complex that looks so much like a pair of boxer shorts. It's too bad that this footage is now all reduced to classified material. I can just picture how the cameramen filming the fireworks would have picked up their walkie-talkies and asked their supervisor, “Director, director, was this planned?”

I find to my surprise that everyone I know, though sorry about the fireman's death, is thrilled by the burning down of the CCTV building. I personally am doing my utmost to suppress my darker impulses and to respond to the fire with appropriate concern, but I have to admit that I too am relishing CCTV's misfortune. Of course, others may well be sorely grieved by this event, in which case I have to accept that my social circle is a mean-spirited little clique. So let me go ahead and reveal my vulgar, mean-spirited position.

First of all, as the saying goes, the reckless court their own destruction. It is a historical law, after all, that if you play with fire you're going to get burned, although we normally think of that
as a very drawn-out process—it's unusual to find a case like this where playing with fire can have such immediate repercussions. As a media outlet, CCTV basically has no media ethics. In most countries, for a television station to do things the way CCTV does would be quite illegal. Here, on the other hand, it is not only legal but it is the very symbol of legality. Over the years, in just how many instances has CCTV been responsible for distorting the facts, confusing matters, debasing culture, twisting the evidence, engaging in deception, colluding in wrongdoing, and glossing over problems? Well, it's just a question—if you say it's never done those things, that must be true, I suppose—the media resources are all under your control, after all.

Logically, when the state suffers such a huge loss, ordinary people should be very upset, because the building was built with taxpayer money. But these days everyone takes a broader view. With all the taxpayer money that is squandered on official banqueting and entertainment, putting up a building not once but twice is no big deal. People tend to think of CCTV as a real ass-kicker, and CCTV likes to think of itself that way too, but when the fire burns its own ass, then it doesn't feel so good anymore. CCTV is a semi-monopoly, and when a semi-monopoly can think so highly of itself, then one can imagine how proud of itself a monopoly organization is. They're top dog, anyway, and you crummy peons are no more than fleas in the top dog's coat. Give me any more hassle, and that little heap of dog shit is your future.

Therefore, CCTV should engage in some self-reflection. Oh, sorry, I forgot—it never needs to do that.

With the development of society and the increasing sophistication of public opinion, we can no longer describe CCTV's credibility as zero—it has already moved into negative territory. In other words, our inclination is to interpret CCTV's news as telling us the opposite of what it claims to be saying. Of course we understand that CCTV, as a national television station and a mouthpiece for the Communist Party, naturally is not free to do whatever it likes,
but still, it is always possible to do something reasonably well—reports produced on demand don't have to be quite as clunky as they are, for that leads to the worst possible outcome. When a media outlet loses all its credibility and not only is not closed down but actually carries on being the state's primary source of publicity, then one has to say that the state itself has lost its credibility.

The unfortunate thing is that in its handling of this fire, CCTV made the exact same mistake it always does. Apart from the huge forest fire in Heilongjiang in 1987, this has to be the fire that has caused the greatest financial losses since the founding of the People's Republic: No matter what, it has got to be a major news item. But it has been downplayed so vigorously by CCTV, you might have thought it was as inconsequential as a fire that destroys just your home or mine. If the BBC headquarters burned down because of fireworks, or even if Hunan Satellite TV headquarters burned down, CCTV would definitely report this most enthusiastically. Not only would there be rolling coverage, but I bet the director would be so overjoyed he would roll around on the ground in delight, taking rolling coverage to a whole new level. But such a big event—one that made headline news and warranted live coverage around the world—actually went unheralded on a national television station, “harmonized” to the point of total effacement. That is the current state of news reporting in our country: All the news we see has undergone a process of selection and deletion, and everything depends on the needs of the screenplay and the requirements of the director.