China

Nearly Arrested in Nanyang!

While on a mission to Nanyang (pop. 9.5 million) to sell coal to the local power station we somehow transgressed their protocols and the managers called in the Police to have us arrested for ‘spying’.

Although it seemed ridiculous the managers were quite belligerent and seem determined to pursue trumped up spying changes.

I had walked on ahead of the main group and my photographs weren’t seized as were the other’s, thus preserving evidence of a potentially serious brush with paranoid officialdom in a huge city that didn’t have power every second day because of a lack of coal. We had access to plenty of coal and we were trying to get it to them.

Our Sponsors were negotiating vociferously with power station managers. The Police arrived. Then more Police. Then plain clothes security personnel to whom everyone paid great deference. Meanwhile I had made my way back to our vehicle and I was safely ensconced in the back seat pretty much out of sight and out of the verbal melee and cross cultural mayhem.

What ‘intelligence’ they thought we were going to glean from a visit to an old coal fire powered station was never revealed. A small piece of excitement that made our time in Nanyang more memorable.

If only they knew.

 

© Kim Epton 2011-2024
312 words, nine photographs.

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