cce blog

update from erin

Another email from Erin:

gates are officially locked, but much to my diappointment, there's no armed guard. i'm going to make a statue and put a gun in his hand just so i feel reassured that my jail experience is genuine. what kind of prison doesn't have an armed guard?! and paint some signs renaming the school a jail.

we spent pretty much all day at the beach getting in last minute soccer games and sunburn. well, i got sunburn, my chinese friends didn't burn too much. i've already called 5's on one of the roofs to hold classes. this way we can look at the street below us and pretend we're not being held captive. the wall is looking more and more attractive since i could easily jump off it and disappear into the alley. the only problem is that i don't exactly blend in here, so someone could easily call the school and report the foreigner being on the loose. shit, the foreigner escaped here cage...wait, that was just the monkeys from the zoo.

the good news is that the prison term may be shortened. i had a chat with one of my bosses, and she mentioned letting us out after 5 or 6 days. they're worried that because contrary to what was reported, the government didn't actually cancel the national holiday, people will come here from BJ. given they've allegedly blocked off the roads and are checking, i dont' know how this is possible, but again, i got one of those, well, there are so many roads... what, the one main highway? i mean, you're talkign about china... just put the fucking military all around and close of the border. shoot if they don't stop. it's not as though you've had problems using force in the past. this doens't seem to be the time to grow a conscience, now does it. i pointed out that you can't catch sars by walking along the beach. but what if someone comes and talks to you? how often deos that happen? theyll all be running around in their masks anyway. but just in case, it's better to not trust us to act responsibly. they told us last week all hotels had been ordered closed and not to accept guests, but apparently that version changed? oy.. so much ever-changing information. so after the holiday ends, they're thinking of letting us out for exercise and things, in a very regimented way. they've recreated the monitor system. every class has a monitor, who must check his classmates' health each day. all the monitors are men, naturally. so perhaps next week we'll be allowed to go, en masse to the beach, but no one is trusted to go out alone. only with the group. perhaps we can hold onto a piece of string and walk single-file as well. and sing nursery rhymes. however, following that, they may change to the more common practice where we can go out, but again no visitors are allowed to come in.

the combination of possible bj tourists and of course the migrants seems to be the problem. any reasoning at this point is beyond question. i may be camping out on the roof for a while or something. run laps around the courtyard?

my friend called me from dalian. apparently there're no cases there, but anyone entering the city has their temperature monitored and maybe a medical
screening. she was told not to go out, or at least as little as possible, and i tried to explain why that was silly if there were no sick people around.

ay, well i'm 6 1/2 hours into my prison term and already bored out of my mind.

erin

Posted by cce at May 2, 2003 03:05 PM | TrackBack