D8: The Police

September 26, 2024

Curly hair paradox, the better it looks, the worse it smells

They were calling from a Baoding number. I suspected, even before I picked it up, that it was not going to be a random spam call. It was possible, but unlikely.

Random spam calls come from phone numbers all over the country, but all but one night of my time in Hebei was in Baoding; I had called emergency services from this phone; and I had a video going viral that, even judiciously edited, pretty clearly showed willful ignorance on the part of the police as the source of my problem.

While I was still reeling from the verbal apology and not actually believing that they were going to cross provincial borders to apologize to me in person, Officer Zhang of the Laiyuan County Public Security Bureau had added me on WeChat to get my location pin.

Halfway between incredulous and impressed that it took me 3 days of travel for what's not quite 3 hours by car, I don't think I really believed they were coming until they showed up.

With flowers.

Officer Zhang, two people from the police station, and the manager of the original hotel I'd booked in at in Laiyuan. All standing outside my hotel with me in a move that I realized after the fact was intentionally done to ensure that there were no records or CCTV of us meeting. They even asked a guy who was "just going to take a picture of the foreigner existing" to please not do that.

Ninety minutes of standing outside my hotel.

Ninety minutes of increasingly firm hints that they were willing to sponsor my travel expenses if I could just do them a little favor ....

Ninety minutes of not listening to me explain that, from the perspective of a non-journalist¹ who mostly works for Chinese media, the worst possible thing to do if they want this to go away was to ask me to delete it and that there were dozens of available options in the form of follow-up videos that could make this gradually fade away ... and, with my arms getting really tired from holding that giant fucking bouquet of flowers and my hands unable to do anything because of that giant fucking bouquet of flowers, someone shoved a large roll of bills in my jersey pocket.

I suspect it was the hotel manager.

I don't think it was his idea or his money but I have lots of reasons for suspecting him including: 1) as a legacy from the years when pickpockets were common², generally being Very Aware of what's going on with my jersey pockets; 2) the police and Public Security damn well know they shouldn't be paying a member of the public to take down an unflattering video; 3) his paying me giving them plausible deniability; and 4) Officer Zhang pointing the finger at him the next day when I messaged her asking how to return the cash I found in my pocket.

The video was set to private for all of about 14 hours on Douyin⁴, three hours on WeChat Channels⁵, during which time two of the larger "all things foreigner" clickbait aggregators⁶ posted articles with versions they had ripped of it.

¹ It's really important that I'm not a journalist. Journalists have restrictions that I don't.

² Chinese petty crime has mostly all moved online.

³ Thanks so much for driving multiple hours outside your jurisdiction to meet with me. If you could tell me who this money belongs to, I would like to return it to him. Otherwise, I will donate it to Hainan SPCA for expenses incurred rebuilding the animal shelter after Typhoon Yagi.

⁴ I set it to private in front of them and didn't undo this until the next afternoon

⁵ I gave someone else admin access to my Channel and I couldn't do anything in front of them

⁶ OneTube Daily and The Waijiao. Neither of which contacted me to use my content, both of which decided my Chinese name is "Fanyi," and with The Waijiao also ripping and machine translating most of last year's Xinhua article on me.

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