Monkey House Blues

by Dominic Stevenson

  I could hear doors opening down the landing. Liu said it was prisoners going to work. There were extra cells with machinery in them downstairs, and opposite our block there was another identical building. The jail held around 500 inmates, but the population fluctuated depending on the time of year and how many were waiting to be transferred to work camps and other prisons. A guard opened the door and took Liu and me into his office. I noticed that a large wooden rack with straps on it was standing against the wall outside our cell. I shuddered to think what it was used for, but it resembled some kind of medieval torture instrument. The corridor was a dimly lit row of identical doors with numbers on them, with a shuttered-steel window at the end. Bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling just above head height, and the waft of ammonia drowned out any natural smells. One of the rooms turned out to be an office, though it was indistinguishable from the cells apart from the presence of a small wooden desk. The guard sat opposite and began to ask Liu about my health, which I’d made well known to the police the night before. He spoke no English, but with Liu’s help we managed to have a conversation of sorts. The captain, as I was told to call him, had a kindly, sympathetic face, with greasy jet-black hair and thick-lensed spectacles. He’d been in charge of the wing for 20 years, and it showed on his drawn, worn-out face and pockmarked complexion. The room began to fill up as a stream of trustee prisoners and guards took turns to stare at me. I was feeling like a freak-show exhibit in some dystopian carnival when the captain grunted for everyone to leave.

  Now it was just myself, Liu and the captain. I began to sweat and shake, as if the ground beneath me was about to open up and suck me in. My muscles atrophied, tears began to stream down my cheeks, my nose ran and I stuttered for the first time in my life. I felt as if my mind had become disconnected from my body and I was momentarily paralysed. Weightlessness came over me and I imagined being suspended in mid-air looking down at myself. I’d heard torture victims recall out-of-body experiences, but I was in no physical pain. The psychological strain was enough to bounce me out of my body, and I worried I was going to shit myself or throw up as I felt more and more detached from my physical being. Liu told me not to worry; the captain was a good guy and wanted to help me. I asked if he knew anything about the charges against me and the sort of jail time that I might expect if convicted, but he said he knew nothing about my case. Liu and Yen had attempted to cheer me up the night before by saying ‘short time’ whenever I looked on the verge of another emotional outburst. Now the captain chimed in with the only English words I ever heard him say.

  ‘Short time, short time.’

  He gave us both a cigarette and told me a doctor would come and see me soon. Another prisoner turned up at the door and the captain invited him in. His English was much better than Liu’s and I could talk to him quite normally, without referring to a dictionary. He was in for some kind of thieving, but didn’t elaborate, and had opted to do his six-year stretch in the detention centre rather than a prison. I started to relax, and after ten minutes we were taken back to our cell, where a jealous Yen asked Liu to breathe his tobacco breath over him as compensation for missing out on the treat.

  Liu was happy to have got out of the cell for the first time in many months, and we spent some time chatting in pidgin English. He was serious about wanting to learn the language, and I lent him the English–Chinese phrase book the police had allowed me to keep when I was arrested, which he read every day for hours on end. As his English improved, he began to tell me about his home town, which I’d only seen for a brief couple of hours before my arrest. To many Shanghainese, anyone born on the wrong side of the Huangpu River was a second-class citizen; to be from another province meant being condemned with the term bazi, or peasant. There were exceptions to this rule, with people from Beijing or Guangzhou being given grudging respect as residents of the country’s cultural and business centres. Traditionally, anyone from outside the chief domains of Han culture was considered a barbarian, their cultures and traditions sneered at by the dominant group. China has 54 ethnic minorities, all of whom have been – to a greater or lesser extent – sledgehammered into submission by the relentless hegemony of the Han majority. Only the Tibetans have elicited much sympathy from the West, who’ve long since been seduced by their serene, moon-like smiles and mystical interpretation of the teachings of the Buddha. In truth, the whole of China had been terrorised for much of the twentieth century, and the Han Chinese had been expected to lead the way in the succession of disastrous campaigns the Communists had foisted on them. In the ‘new’ China of Deng Xiaoping, a burgeoning urban middle class was eager to draw up boundaries between itself and the peasant masses, and Liu knew which side of the fence he wanted to be on. Yen, on the other hand, with his darker complexion and illiteracy, was content to remain a part of the working classes, and was often mocked by Liu for being a bazi. Liu would become incensed in conversations with Yen and hold his finger up to his brain to signify to me our cellmate’s stupidity. Nonetheless, I started to warm to Yen, finding his simple ways more appealing than Liu’s, whom I decided was a smartarse.

  As a foreigner, I was by definition dirty. My cellmates were fastidious in the washing of both themselves and their clothes. They took great interest in how I washed myself, offering expert advice on the tiniest aspects of cell hygiene. Within a few weeks I was copying them in every detail, squeezing out the standard-issue mini towel provided by the jail in exact accordance with cell protocol, and folding it meticulously in an identical manner to them. They observed every move I made, chattering between themselves, chuckling incredulously at my alien eccentricities.

  Of particular interest was my body hair, especially my chest. Compared to the Chinese, with their sparse, wispy, bum-fluff beards, I was a gorilla, and I quickly acquired nicknames such as ‘King Kong’ and ‘Monkey Man’. Although they had very little facial hair themselves, Yen and Liu spent much of their time plucking the small hairs they did have by binding two toothpaste-tube tops together with cotton and ripping out the offending growth. They would squint with pain as they did this, and their faces often bled. I never understood the point of it all and within months had sprouted a bushy, Marx-like beard that helped me stay warm in the winter months.

  It was decided that I would be in charge of scrubbing the floor every night. Yen was already doing the morning clean, and I would relieve Liu of his evening duty since he was the most senior prisoner, being both the oldest and the longest-serving inmate amongst us. My job was to take a piece of damp rag and wipe the floor with it, but as usual there was a particular way of doing it and my circular wipes were immediately criticised by both Liu and Yen, who insisted I copy their lawnmower-style method of pushing the rag in straight lines while crawling on the floor. My other chore was to collect the hot water at 5.30 every third morning. The trustee prisoners who performed the water-dispensing duties on the other side of the door tended to be those who’d opted to do their sentences at the detention centre rather than move on to the main prison at Ti Lan Qiao. It seemed strange to me that anyone would want to stay in this place of his own choice, and it made me apprehensive about what the main jail would be like. Liu said that people with shorter sentences (fewer than five years) often stayed on at the detention centre because they could secure a better place in the hierarchy of the system. The big jail at Ti Lan Qiao had so many long-term prisoners it would be unlikely that a short-term inmate would get any of the benefits or privileges. At the detention-centre jail, it was easier to be a big fish in a small pond and thus receive maintenance jobs like cooking, cleaning and gardening. Also, there was little ‘ideological guidance’ at the detention centre, and prisoners had more time to themselves. Once sentenced, Liu was hoping to stay on and work as a trustee at the jail and use the time he had off to learn English. My arrival in the cell suited his studies, and for the first few weeks at least we got on well with each other.

  Liu was from the ‘right’ side of the Huangpu River. Like so many middle-clas
s Chinese, his family had lost everything during Mao’s decades of perpetual revolution. To his credit, he’d managed to salvage something of his family’s affluent past by working as a junior officer for a Shanghai shipping line. The job had enabled him to travel to countries like Japan, Cuba and Chile, though he was rarely permitted to go ashore. He spoke a very basic pidgin English and after some difficulties managed to tell me how he’d landed in Shanghai’s No. 1 Detention Centre.

  In addition to their usual cargo, the ships’ officers often brought back goods from the countries they visited and took kickbacks for their services, sometimes unaware of the goods’ contents. One such package had turned out to contain almost ten kilos of pure amphetamine. I had no idea whether Liu had known what he was carrying, and I didn’t blame him for not confiding in me. There was a good chance he’d be executed for such a crime. The captain of the jail assured him that he’d only be charged with smuggling, as opposed to drug smuggling, which seemed to cheer him up a bit. As time went on, I realised the captain always told people what they wanted to hear.

  Liu had been in the detention centre for about 18 months. Like the rest of us, he’d been denied access to a lawyer and had not been permitted to have any other visits since his arrest. His family were aware of his predicament, but any contact, even a letter, was forbidden. There was no mention by any official of when he might conceivably get to court, since other members of the ship’s crew had fled and his case couldn’t proceed without them.

  Many prisoners found themselves in this legal limbo, which was compounded by the time-honoured tradition of ‘killing the rooster to frighten the monkey’. This Chinese idiom refers to making an example of certain criminals to admonish the others. If, for example, there had been a high incidence of bicycle theft in Shanghai district and the authorities felt a crackdown was needed, local bike thieves would be stockpiled in the region’s various lock-ups until the police could claim to have cracked a major ring. A large gang of hapless petty criminals would then be dragged into court together and presented on the evening news as enemies of the people before being handed down unusually harsh sentences. Someone charged with a similar offence either before or after one of these dragnet operations usually found their sentences significantly shorter. It was pure luck – or misfortune – that decided who would get to play the rooster in the Chinese roulette of the People’s legal system.

  It was well known by everyone that one noisy prisoner down the corridor had been waiting for many years to get to court. He made regular howls of protest, which fell on deaf ears, but they served as a reminder to the rest of the inmates that they too were going nowhere fast. Yen and Liu told me the record for time served on remand in this place was 17 years. The unfortunate holder of this record had been lost in the system, and when he eventually got to court he was given 17 years and promptly released. Many petty criminals would not waste the courts’ resources at all due to a law that permitted the police to imprison minor offenders for up to three years in police-run sweatshops.

  Yen’s case was more cut and dried. He’d been convicted of stealing scrap metal from a disused railway line after being grassed up by a member of his own family. His brother had been charged and convicted with two other men of one of the grisliest murders of recent years. The three men had killed a business rival and chopped his body into small pieces before throwing it into the river. During his interrogation, he’d been forced to inform the authorities of any crimes his family members might have committed, so he fingered his brother for a completely separate offence.

  A couple of months later, Yen was reading the local paper when, out of the blue, he started pounding the wall with his fists. Liu eventually translated to me (with a wide-eyed smile, as if he was reporting on a friend’s engagement announcement) that he’d just learned of his brother’s execution. Nobody was surprised. In a country where thieves are routinely put to death, his had been an extraordinarily brutal crime. It would not have occurred to the guards to inform Yen in advance, and besides, executions are only newsworthy in China when the state wishes to ‘frighten the monkeys’.

  After breakfast on the second day, the hole that the food had come through opened again. A guard grunted, and Yen and Liu leapt to their feet and stood to attention as the big door was opened and an officer asked me to step outside. The police wanted to interview me again. I was led downstairs, along a corridor and out the back door of the jail section into a small courtyard, where they left me. I stood around for a couple of minutes as a handful of young guards smiled and stared at me. I was getting used to my celebrity status, relaxing into the idea that wherever I went heads would turn and mouths would gossip. When someone saw me, they’d nudge the person next to them until everyone had a good look. I’d smile and say ni hao, which they appreciated, and I liked to think I was a breath of fresh air in the dreary place.

  ‘Please come with me.’

  A young man in civilian clothes appeared and led me into another building. It was a long, poorly lit corridor of identical cells, each containing the standard-issue bolted chair with straps, situated in front of a three-man desk. There was shouting coming from one of the cells and police with sticks milling around outside, and the young man ushered me into one of the spare rooms.

  ‘Please sit down,’ he said, pointing at the chair in the centre of the room.

  He took his place behind the desk and started talking to his colleagues in Chinese. There were no windows in the room, just nicotine-stained walls with some Chinese characters stencilled on them in red paint. A gekko scuttled along the ceiling to steal a fly from a cobweb that stretched across the top corner of the room. I had my eye on a packet of Chinese cigarettes on the desk in front of me. In the middle of the desk sat the detective in charge of my interrogation, with a female secretary to his right who was writing everything down. The detective introduced himself in Chinese and looked to the young man, who, it turned out, was the translator. Neither the detective nor his assistant spoke any English, so every time he spoke he would pause to let the young man translate. The translator introduced himself as Alan and said he’d been involved with other foreign dope-smuggling cases. Most English-speaking Chinese give themselves English first names that have no relation to the translation of their own names. I think they just like to have an identity in the language they have chosen to learn. Alan spoke excellent English and dressed in stylish Western suits. He was friendly in a rather smarmy kind of way, but I decided it would be a good idea to get on friendly terms with these people and made a point of chatting about anything other than my case.

  ‘What music do you like, Alan?’

  ‘George Michael – do you like him?’

  ‘Sure. “Guilty feet . . .’” I said, wangling my legs around the concrete floor with a distinct lack of rhythm.

  ‘Yes,’ he laughed, ‘and “Careless Whisper” is my favourite song.’

  ‘Can I have a cigarette please, Alan?’

  He spoke to the detective, who quickly pushed the packet across the desk as if he felt guilty for not offering me one already.

  We were getting along: a good start under the circumstances. Alan’s ambition was to visit England or America one day, but like most of his countrymen he had no passport, let alone a visa, and few policemen had the money to buy a plane ticket. I felt more relaxed with these people than I had with some of the ghouls I’d met the night of my arrest; they seemed more human, less intimidating and quite excited to have a different kind of criminal to pass the working hours with. It’s always a good idea to get policemen on your side if possible, and in a country like China, where the police have powers far beyond those in the West, I knew that being liked by them would be a great help. They could make my life hell if they chose, and there was nothing to be gained by being arrogant. My future was in their hands, and it was crucial that their overall opinion of me was positive.

  ‘She’s very pretty,’ I said, pointing at the detective’s assistant.

  Alan laughed and tr
anslated the compliment, which made the detective laugh and the girl blush.

  ‘Do you like Chinese girls?’ He was translating for the detective, and I nodded.

  ‘Chinese girls are beautiful.’

  ‘I like foreign girls better,’ said Alan.

  After the pleasantries we got down to the details of my case, which I thought had been pretty much exhausted already. How wrong was I? In Britain, I doubt whether terrorist suspects are given the kind of grilling I got with my half-kilo of hash. The endless attention to the smallest, irrelevant details went on and on for hours. A typical conversation went as follows.

  ‘In your earlier statement you said that on arrival at Shanghai railway station you took a yellow taxi?’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And yet today you said the taxi was brown?’

  ‘Well, it was yellowish-brown, sort of beige, I suppose.’

  ‘Beige?’

  ‘Yes, that’s a sort of light-brown colour.’

  ‘So why did you say it was yellow?’

  ‘Well, it was the middle of the night. Does it really matter what colour the taxi was?’

  But it did matter, and hours would go by without anything of any real importance being said. This suited me fine, because as long as they stuck to such trivial questioning I could smoke their cigarettes (which no official ever denied me) without having to answer any awkward questions. After weeks of this, I came to the conclusion they actually quite enjoyed it, especially Alan, who was effectively getting free English lessons. I picked him up on his pronunciation and introduced him to new vocabulary, and I knew my stuff, having taught English for several years. Occasionally a tricky question would catch me off-guard and I’d have to invent a name for someone and make a point of remembering it later. We talked for hours about Pakistan, and I decided the guy I bought my hash off would be called Abdul. I found this easy to remember because whenever I told a Pakistani my name was Dominic they would say: