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The older man began to speak to me as he stood there, smoking. "I am the detective assigned to your case." He spoke carefully, but very well I thought. He looked up, rather contemplative and continued, "You can call me...officer Blue Sky." He seemed to be thinking something, watching the sky above, large billowy white clouds drifted by lazily in an unusually clear afternoon sky; so that was it, he had just made up his English name on the spot. He finished his cigarette and led me to the room where the younger man was. Inside on the back wall was a police mug shot wall, long black stripes with measurements written on each line. They handed me a small board with my name and other information on it, to hold against my chest and asked me to stand in the center of the wall, first a side photo, then a portrait shot. After that they fingerprinted me on a digital system, no ink--I had never seen nor heard of such a thing. I rolled my finger over what looked like a supermarket register-scanner device that evidently read my finger print with lasers. Then I was led outside and Blue Sky walked me over to a line of toilet stalls enclosed in a walled area. I relieved myself, door open by request of Blue Sky, washed up for the first time in a day and a half, then I was led to another building across the way, near the reception building. I still had the idea of paying the damages and getting out of here coursing through my head.
A vengeful spirit, stolen money, loaned and borrowed money, ID and bank cards and psychotic machines mocking me with open empty steel mouths. It all unraveled like a loosely tied bag full of things no one wants to lose, yet lost it becomes. And now I had lost too much.
Blue Sky showed me some paperwork which detailed the damage and expense for repair of the ATM in question. The total came to a little over 14,000 RMB*. He asked if I would be able to pay this. I told him if I were allowed to contact my sister, I could pay it within 24 hours. He mulled this over, but continued to ask me if I had any memory of beating the machine. I replied that no, I did not and through the entire course of my predicament I never admitted to knowingly destroying the machine. It was the typical thing you see on cop shows, try and find a discrepancy in one story to the next, change up the order of the questions, and find the weak link in the story. Only mine had none. I never denied breaking the ATM, I only repeatedly denied any memory of the event.
I found Blue Sky to be pleasant, if not distracted by something only he realized. He offered me green tea, which I accepted, and cigarettes, which I declined. We took a few breaks here and there and at one time had dinner together, similar to what I had at the police station. Sometime around 10:00 they wrapped it up, and I was then asked to sign some papers, which showed that I was officially being arrested. I asked Blue Sky when I could call my Consulate representative. He said that I was not allowed to call until 24 hours after my arrest. I told him I thought he was wrong about that and perhaps he could get into trouble. I also told him I sat in the police station for more than 24 hours. When he said that I had only now been arrested, I pointed out that at the police station the night before, I had also been fingerprinted and photographed. This gave him pause, evidently he juggled this information about, then he said, "I will contact them in the morning then." I thanked him, then we piled into the same SUV and drove out into the ever present Guangzhou traffic. On the drive to god knew where, I contemplated what had happened over the last few hours. The comment the other man had made about this "being over soon" was just a ploy I gathered. Either that or the man actually believed it would happen. I never did find out exactly who he was or why he had been in the car with us that afternoon. Did he represent the bank? Had he brought those papers detailing the expenses for repair? Perhaps, but I will never know now.
All I knew was that I must have suffered for the first time in my life, a nervous breakdown, destroying an ATM in the process with no memory of it transpiring. Here I was, in a country on the opposite side of the world geographically and politically as well. An undercurrent of thought began to flow rapidly across all others that was totally useless but unavoidable nevertheless; had I not been robbed several days before, none of this would ever have happened. Had I not helped Peter and not stayed at his place and had I moved into my own place I would definitely be 24,000 RMB richer for it. My return from An Whei was my undoing, when it should have been the bright light bulb that inspired a new beginning for me.
Why? What had changed in that month away that so thoroughly ruined my life in China? Was it the recent death of a friend also named Michael, when I returned? A friend who was also tied to Peter, my new nemesis? Maybe it was I thought. Chinese culture has very strong belief in ghosts and how they can affect the living. The haunting ghost of a recently deceased friend, his spirit now driven to curse me after returning to Guangzhou. I didn't visit him while he was in the hospital, thinking it a relapse of something he had overcome before, which turned out to be where he died. He had evidently cursed Peter as well, and justly deserved. I only hoped that Paul, a pivotal character in my four plus years in China didn't receive a ghostly curse from our late friend. For one short moment I considered myself lucky; I was still alive while Michael had slowly wasted away in a foreign hospital, never knowing really that he was dying, until the very end and of course, what can anyone do then but accept fate, or go out raging against the world, or God or both.
A vengeful spirit, stolen money, loaned and borrowed money, ID and bank cards and psychotic machines mocking me with open empty steel mouths. It all unraveled like a loosely tied bag full of things no one wants to lose, yet lost it becomes. And now I had lost too much. Strangely, I had been holding together so far. Perhaps I was still numb, numb from going berserk the day before, a madman beating a steel monster into an electronic coma. To this day I have never seen the video of my destruction of the ATM. I was told through various sources that it was extremely violent, and my friends said I was in all the papers, even a writeup in Shanghai! Now I felt I was running on autopilot, my psyche locked into a frozen state, while all the auto-features ran at a bare minimum–breathing, blinking, heart beating. And now Detective Blue Sky began to tell me to my horror, where I was being taken.
*NOTE--14,000 RMB (also written as renminbi) in 2006 was worth in April 8.01434 to 1 USD. So 14,000 equaled $1,746.87 USD in 2006 Chinese dollars.
The Chinese Oz April 21, Friday late evening
Prior to leaving the interrogation place, Blue Sky said I would be "held in detention" for at least seven days. While in the car heading to this place, Blue Sky gave me a speech he most likely told all foreign detainees. "You may be here for a few weeks or even longer. You'll eat very simple food and you'll meet others like yourself, perhaps make interesting friendships." He paused in his usual manner, searching for the right phrases to put me at ease no doubt, as he continued, "Yours is a very simple case. This will all be over soon." Yeah, heard that before from another guy who disappeared. Yet my mind clung so desperately to those two words, "seven days" I began to hope for salvation yet again.
When I asked if I would be put in with Chinese or other foreigners, he explained that I would be in a cell with both, the foreigners being mainly from Pakistan and Africa. He said there were a great many Muslims there. I considered this for about 15 seconds and then I told him that being an American, it might not be safe for me to be mixed in a room with a number of Pakistani or Muslims in general, given the current political and religious tensions created by the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. I could see that Blue Sky thought this over seriously, then he said, "Alright. I'll speak to the guards." After about a twenty minute drive out of the city we approached a high walled structure, lights running around it's perimeter. As we rounded a corner I saw a block shaped turret, high above the stone wall. I remember experiencing a "This isn't real" feeling for the first time. Yet the last thirty something hours had been feeling that way, come to think of it. Because it was night, the pitch black sky added to the spookiness of the austere structure we now approached as it loomed up grotesquely before us, taking up the entire landscape.
In the "Wizard of Oz", as Dorothy and her menagerie of friends come to the end of the yellow brick road and cross the bridge to the large gate into the city, I felt a twinge of recognition and similarity. As the police vehicle curved up the wide driveway, there before me rose the most massive solid steel gate or wall I'd ever seen in my life, but instead of a tiny door mounted into the massive one, as in Oz, a small block house was attached to the wall next to the gate. One officer got out of the SUV and showed something to the guard on duty, then the guard opened a door and I was escorted from the vehicle across the parking lot and through the door. The imposing steel monolith set into, or part of, the wall never moved.
Inside we crossed a driveway that ran between the wall and the inner buildings. We then walked into a large waiting area in the main building where Blue Sky checked in with a female officer. For the first time I saw bars. Blue Sky led me through two heavy jail doors into what is usually shown in movies involving new inmates in a prison, the search and shower area. Fortunately there had not been a lot of high crime in Canton in the last several hours because I was the only one there, or perhaps that was arranged for me as well, bring in the American under cover of darkness so as not to disrupt things. A Chinese man in a white smock took my blood pressure, height, and weight measurements. I was then asked to strip and place my clothes on a table. I removed everything from my pockets first, then took off everything and placed them in the bag. The doctor gave me a quick body inspection, mainly looking for any identifying marks, like tattoos and the like. There was no actual strip search, thank god. My clothing was first passed through a strange machine that made huge electrical sparks as they passed through to the other side; "What the hell?" I thought. They were retrieved and then placed in a plastic bag, vacuum sealed, labeled and set aside. I put on the prison togs that were given me. I looked ready to go play a round of soccer with the boys from the pub. Dark navy blue with double white stripes down the sides; does Adidas know they are sponsoring a prison in China?
Then I was asked to remove my glasses. I hesitated, and told them I would be completely blind without them. I didn't like the idea of going into a prison cell not being able to make out anything, "Oh! Excuse me! Didn't mean to touch you there..." and all those type of horrible mishaps came to mind. Blue Sky looked my glasses over and talked with the doctor, then he asked if I could remove the temples, then it would be OK. The temples were flexible steel, so could be conceivably made into a weapon. I took a few moments to remove the tiny screws with my finger nail. I succeeded with one, but the other had to be clipped off. The sharp edge that was left went unnoticed to Blue Sky and the doctor, but came in handy later as a scratching tool I used to label my personal belongings, such as my lunch box and so on. Also, as a few other prisoners with glasses came to be known to me, I pointed out that although their temples on their glasses were plastic, plainly visible inside of them ran a length of bendable steel wire. Guess it was the "out of site, out of mind" principle that ruled in this place. Later I would find that to be true in many and various instances.
Blue Sky pointed to a large plastic storage box and told me to take it with me. Before we left I pointed to my bare feet. Blue Sky talked with the doctor, who rummaged through a locker nearby and found a large pair of rubber slippers. I found that this simple request was worthwhile later on, because several new inmates that came to the prison after me arrived with no slippers--they had to purchase them!
We left the examination area and passed by the check-in desk and walked across a large garage area to a door on the opposite side. We walked up six flights of stairs to the third floor. There, a small group of guards stood behind a desk on the opposite side of a locked, barred gate. Beyond that stretched a very long hallway. Door after door lined one wall of this great corridor, while the other side had barred, open air windows.
This gate was opened and I was ushered in along with Blue Sky and his associate. He talked with the guard as we slowly walked down the hallway. One of the other guards that followed tried to converse with me in English. "Where you are from?" America I replied. As I continued to walk and follow the lead guard who talked with Blue Sky, I looked around a bit. To my right and below was a central garden and basketball court. The building was a cube of sorts, surrounding this courtyard. There were four floors and from what I was able to discern later on, the hall and the adjoining right angle hall on the second and third floors were prison cells. The remaining two hallways opposite me on the other side of the courtyard looked to be officer's quarters because of curtained windows, normal doors and lights shining from within.
The guard halted and stopped me in front of doorway. Another guard opened a steel solid door with a large key, opened it to reveal a second gate of bars, which he opened with a digital key he touched to a pad on the outside wall. Now I got my first view of the cell. It was nothing at all like I expected. As the door swung open I walked in. On the floor sat three other inmates and one of them motioned me with his hand to walk on in. The guard closed the two doors noisily and the loud clanging behind me echoed forever it seemed, down the hallway. I can still here that haunting solid sound in my mind to this day. I had arrived and I was pulling up every ounce of courage and determination within me to see this through without showing fear; this was to be my home for an uncertain amount of time now, and it was all I could do to keep from collapsing in a heap upon the floor.
China, my beloved homeland for the past four plus years, where I had gained the love and admiration of countless thousands of students, from kindergarten all the way up to University, was now out of reach to me. Where I had fallen in love more than once, and very nearly got married; perhaps that was the beginning of my end--I had never truly recuperated from the loss of my relationship. It was a sore point that my closest friends would make when they saw me at my worst. China had become more than just home, it was everything to me and I could not imagine not being a part of it for the rest of my life. I was addicted to all its wonder and vices, and now it seemed I had shamed myself before the very culture I had come to adore. So this was it, the end of my beautiful journey in a country I had come to love so very deeply, so much so that even the death of both my parents could not pull me away and return to my own homeland. An uncertain future awaited me here in this prison, more so than when I first stepped off a plane at the Guangzhou Airport and inhaled that first exotic breath of air in ancient Canton, another memory I cannot forget. Not realizing that it would be the last time I would see her, when about to board the plane to China, my mother looked deep into my eyes, with tears welling in her own, she said, "Don't come back, until you find what you are looking for." I now wondered..."had I?"
Note--For the next six months, I would endure the most grueling mental and physical experiences of my life. I lived with people who were imprisoned for petty crimes of theft of no more than $50, to rape, dismemberment, and even murder. That time is recorded in a story I call "Within Dragon's Teeth", which can be found here U*lovett! Stories Home
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