Inmate plays most dangerous game, dies

In continuing my great mission to promote cross-cultural understanding and create a harmonious society, I wish to share with my readers one of the first “fun” stories of 2009 in the local media.

Let me tell you the tale of “duo mao mao.”

Our story begins with Li Qiaoming, a 24-year-old resident of Yuxi, Yunnan Province. On January 30, Li was wandering about the fine southern forests when he decided to emulate the American icon Paul Bunyon and engage in some illegal logging. Apparently the sound of gigantic old trees crashing into the forest floor alerted authorities something was up, and the fuzz came to confiscate his flannel and hatchet.

Li was taken to a detainment facility in Jinning, and nine days later he emerged: this time bound for the ER. He died fast, and the doctors said it was due to multiple blows and kicks sustained all over his body.

How did he sustain these fatal blows? By playing the most dangerous game that every proper American parent wants to see banned from elementary school: hide and seek.

Well, technically it could be blind man’s bluff, depending on who translates “duo mao mao,” but you get the idea. The point is that he most certainly was not abused in any way by the fine and upstanding prison guards—a career known world over for attracting nothing but paragons of virtue. They would never violate a prisoner’s rights.

But Li isn’t a prisoner.

Now, the thing to remember is that jail here is … weird.

See, this loops back into international agreements, and as far as technicalities go, this country has a fantastic record for protecting prisoners’ rights.

The operative word is “prisoner.”

Much as a US cop slapping cuffs on you does not grant you your phone call, being detained or otherwise jailed doesn’t quite make you a prisoner: neither does a one- to twelve-month stint in a re-education through labor camp. This isn’t office space, and there is no “federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison”—the ones under long-term lockup are the best protected.

And so knowing their infamous reputation localy, it is hard to imagine that in a common jail Mr. Li perished game of hiding from cats.

Here is this week’s lesson: if you are going to lie to everyone, make sure it’s believable. Or at least forge some evidence to make it believeable.

When you get right down to it, humans do not give a shit about the truth. Not even enough to push out a turtle head.

We grasp are a few flimsy pieces of evidence which validate said story, then say, “Sure, that sounds right to me. A camel pulling a rocket? I guess Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction.”

Sadly, Americans never received their iconic photograph of that fateful glow-in-the-dark camel outside a weapons plant because the government didn’t care enough to give a couple college kids a copy of Photoshop CS 2.0 and a chance at extra credit.

And the Chinese people never got their security footage.

Back up.

You see, in order to back up its hide-and-seek story, the Jining Police and the Yunnan Provincial Information Department—whose name I changed from “propaganda department” to match standards in the US and UK—invited in an independent team of 15 investigators led by two political bloggers to check out the story.

The team was shown to the site where that fateful kick happened, but said there was no security footage of Li’s injuries because the jail didn’t have a security system.

The. Jail. Did. Not. Have. Security.

All it takes is a beat-up 10-year-old computer with a USB port—of which I’m sure every local landfill and electronics stripping site has dozens—and a 50-yuan USB camera. You mount the camera, run the wire and click fucking “Record.” Do it in shit-resolution black and white, grabbing every 5 seconds, and you would have Radio Shack’s security system, which still runs off a Trash-80 with a tape backup drive.

How are the guards getting paid in a jail that can’t afford a security system? Isn’t the jail the one place in town that really should have a security system? Now this is a news story worth covering.

In my mind, I picture this Jinning jail as being like the “honor system” jail from El Mariachi, where prisoners come and go as they please and conduct business on a cell phone wired into a car battery.

But beyond this implausibility, let’s consider another point.

Criminals were out of their cells playing hide and seek somewhere the guards could not see them.

Try to visualize it. These strapping, angry men with their shaved heads, muscles and tattoos. These men who guard their food with their forearms before heading over to the weight pile to decide who to make their bitch today. These men, when released from their cells—beyond the watch of the guards mind you—would choose to organize into teams for a game of hide-and-seek.

Red Rover, Red Rover, send reality right over.

The world is not that harmonious.

The only way I could see prisoners taking hide and seek or blind man’s bluff so seriously is if they were told whoever wins can get out of prison a day earlier.

In prison, the most valuable thing is less time in prison. That’s why there was such a big brouhaha last year when the press learned US prisons were giving inmates time off in exchange for donating their organs.

Consider it “good behavior.” Squared.

That’s not much of a choice. If a man is in prison sitting on a dime—watching his child grow up in photos and knowing he will miss out on more than half of his chance to be a dad—and you tell him he can take a nickel off his bid by giving up a kidney, chances are he’s going to jump on it.

Even if he doesn’t have a kid, it might mean five less years of getting tagged from behind.

But really, prisoners are the last place any country should be going to source organs. I’ve written on it before, but based on simple addition, the homeless population can provide more guts with less fuss.

Besides, if you don’t pounce on him for parts, Crazy Jesus of the Woods will just end up frozen to death, face down and ass up, in a rain barrel as the other contestants in the Richard Stallman look-alike competition debate which cuts are the most perishable, and when they should have the Holy Roast.

But I’ve wandered off topic.

The point is, I cannot imagine a hardened criminal will voluntarily play hide-and-seek, ring around the Rosie or pin the tail on the donkey: unless the tail is his balls, the pin is his cock and the donkey is his cellmate’s asshole.

That still leaves us one seriously beaten man, who the police would have us believe was blindfolded and beaten as he tried to find people, or was roundhoused in the face by someone whose hiding place he found, or who did not want to share his hiding place.

Meanwhile, we’re still looking for a nuclear camel.

Don’t look to authority for honesty, because no matter in which country you live there is none to be had. For all the bullshit that separates us around the world, we citizens of the universe can be united in that the people in charge will always be up to their ears in shit.

No wonder that’s all they give us.

Personally, I like my shit shaped, breaded and deep fried like a KFC drumstick.