At long last! I help spy for Chinese people

I pressed the headphones to my ears here in China and listened carefully to the recorded message, an MP3 clip saved to my Chinese client’s PC. She was unable to understand the English as the two parties were speaking very fast and the MP3 device had been hidden in the room somewhere, further reducing the clarity. I spoke the words slowly that I heard, and my client recorded the conversation step by step.

I established for my client that the one man speaking was an American (“A” below) as she cannot distinguish Western accents, nor can most mainland Chinese. The other (“B” below) was a fairly fluent (in English), mainland Chinese speaker.

A: “So you and he don’t umm, have something … a contract?

B: (Clears throat) “I, ummm … don’t know … just write on the paper that … amount of money. I needed to receive it on email … ”

A: “So you gave him this 1 400 RMB??”

B: “I don’t know … do you know how much I lent him?”

No reply, vaguer sound, a cough.

Eventually:

B: “I don’t know, maybe 3 000.”

A: “It was 3 000?”

B: “I don’t know … maybe 4 000 … ”

And on it went. A clearly trying to get information from B and B hesitant to divulge.

I told my client the general hesitancy of B’s voice, and his repetition of “I don’t know”, his inconsistency between not remembering whether or not 3 000 or 4 000 RMB was the figure he had lent (and surely he would remember the precise amount), all indicated obviously that B was lying.

I checked my client’s notes, and corrected mistakes she had made. She nodded sweetly and we parted ways. I received no money but from now on I will be charging. It was free service the first time to show my quality of English and my willingness to keep client confidentiality, but if she needs further assistance for me to write down secretly recorded, somewhat garbled messages because the device was hidden on the person somewhere, a buried “wire”, we will be talking figures. And not small ones.

I have no idea about the context of the above secretly recorded conversation that I was then required to “de-garble”. Precious few, if any, mainland Chinese could possibly follow such a fast, somewhat unclear conversation. But it was not too difficult for a mother-tongue speaker of English.

In China I am regularly spied on. We all are; not just foreigners, but Chinese people too. Here the ethos is: “you are your brother and sister’s keeper”. I know of someone who had his phone tapped just because she happened to have an apartment above a communist party branch office in Shanghai. Senior students have spied on me getting in and out of cars and translators or our “contact person” at the school have then “interrogated” myself and Marion as to where we were. I told them their fortune and the “interrogations” stopped. Bet you the spying didn’t.

Another friend was caught working illegally for a school because the local police were told by a spy that he was living in an apartment which a company was supposed to only rent out to appointed, employed teachers. Neither he nor his company got into trouble because of good old filthy lucre: if enough is dumped into secretive, sweaty, but powerful palms, then those oily hands just make such minor inconveniences go away. Many other foreigners have been belligerently approached by their employing school and questioned as to why it was seen that they were having “Chinese lady friends” entering and leaving their apartment at all sorts of late hours.

And now I am being asked to assist in this spying, though not actually spy myself? Again, I have no idea as to what the above recorded MP3 conversation context was. A and B are entirely unknown to me. But from now on, cousin, I charge.

Spying is an essential part of Chinese culture and one reason why it was so easy for Mao to take over. Spying is a dye cast into the culture that cannot be washed out. And now, at long last, I seem to have arrived. Because, it appears, ironically enough, I am at last trusted by certain Chinese “PI” people.

And I will charge a pretty fee. Am I crossing any moral/ethical boundaries, though? I ask myself. And you.

Follow Rod’s other, often obnoxious or “prose poem” columns, The Mocking Truth, on NewsTime