Alex Lella's Blog

Legality

Had a nice little adventure the other day. I had to take a taxi from one end of Heze to another. I did it with an address card written in Chinese that I showed to the driver. The driver was a friendly older woman. She didn't speak English, but after I got out of the taxi, she handed me a pamphlet written in Chinese. I shrugged and thanked her. I looked at it, but the only thing English written on it was a web address printed at the end which I deduced was where to go for more information about whatever the pamphlet's topic was. The next day at work I showed it to some of the Chinese teachers at work. They looked at it nervously.

"The person must have wanted you to be healthy. It's about exercise," said one of the teachers. That didn't ring true, but I really got suspicious when she said, "I will keep it now." When I tried to protest, she said, "it's useless to you, so why do you want it?"

She had a point, but I wasn't satisfied. Luckily, I had memorized the web address, so that evening I went there on my computer and found a web site that was all in Chinese. No problem there, though. I copied and pasted the first few paragraphs into Google translator. That actually gave a fragmented translation that wasn't really comprehensible, but the fragments included phrases like, "Communist government is corrupt. . .Brainwashes youth. . " and some of it seemed oddly religious things like. . ."Chinese government work of devils."

Well, that's my story. I haven't said anything about the prompt of the day which is whether I would go for possibly illegal medical treatments if I needed them. The answer is "yes, if I really thought it was the best thing.