Would you like to hear about how they crack down on illegal immigration in Guangzhou?  These stories comes from my Italian bud and music partner who performs in Guangzhou each weekend.  Apparently, they are much more strict in Guangzhou about immigration than Shenzhen because of the upcoming Asia games, which Guangzhou is hosting.  So, when visiting Guangzhou, you should have your passport on you at all times.  Some true stories:

• A foreigner comes out of a Starbucks.  Cops are outside and ask him to produce his passport.  He’s simply left it at home.  But instead of accompanying him home to get it, he’s hauled to the police station and has to have someone go fetch it for him.
• Two nights in a row at a dance club:  Thirty police come in, turn on all the lights, and separate the male and female foreigners and require everyone to produce passports.  Fortunately, most of these are Guangzhou locals and know the routine.  However, two new arrivals are unaware of this requirement and get hauled off to the police station.  Nice welcome for them.

They’re also super strict about having your passport when checking into a hotel.  No passport and you’re not sleeping.  It wasn’t nearly this strict when I first came here.  Even if you stayed the week or day before and are checking in again, you’re not getting a room without your passport and legal visa.

You likely heard of the recent mudslide in China which killed, I think, well over one thousand people.  Yesterday, was a Memorial Day for the victims.  I only learned about this late last night.  So, what did this entail?  Shutting down all entertainment businesses like theaters, dance clubs, and Karaoke bars.  All TV within China just showed a blue screen, reminiscent of Windows, with some text informing the viewer that today was a memorial day for the victims of the Gansu mudslide.

I was in the LuoHu part of Shenzhen (in DongMen specifically), a place that’s notorious for fake goods, counterfeit, and thieves.  All around a pretty interesting place to just observe.  I happened to see one of these little kid thieves in action for the first time.  I’ve been robbed once in China, back in 2007, also in Luohu, when a thief somehow managed to open my small pocket on my backpack and extract my iPod.  A pretty amazing feat – that zipper was tough to open, yet this thief did without any awareness from me.

I wasn’t the victim this time, but, as I was crossing on top of one of the pedestrian bridges, I noticed a kid tip-toeing back down the stairs, almost in Bugs Bunny cartoon fashion.  Seriously, the only thing that was missing was the pizzicato violins to punctuate the tip toes.  He had his back arched, both arms extending up with wrists pointed down.  Classic caricature thief pose.  The target was a Chinese man, talking on his mobile phone, with a pouch slung over his shoulder – think of it as a man purse.  These things are popular out here.

Out of curiosity, I turned around and walked to the top of the stairs and watched the thief in pursuit.  I was waiting for the opportunity to yell out.  It almost seemed like the target had some sort of premonition, he moved his right hand on the bag and scooted it in front of him, all the while still on the phone.  At the same time, an skinny ugly man came from behind me and stood right next to me on the top of the stairs.  I looked left at him and notice he was just staring at me, almost a glare.  I didn’t realize what was going on at first and just stared back thinking, “another starer…”.  After a couple or three seconds (a long time in terms of stairs), he went down the stairs to the kid who had given up on the target.  I turned away, looking back to see them both staring back at me.  It slowly sunk in that this was a thieving team.  I’d heard of this before.  The kids do the work and there’s an adult nearby to watch and monitor them, and get them out of trouble when something goes wrong.  Should the thief be caught, the adult can jump in really quick and make up some sort of nonsense like, “Stop harassing my son!  What’s wrong with you!” and make lots of noise as to embarrass the victim into just moving on.

When it comes to these thieves, I’ve been told that most people will not say or do anything to warn or help anyone.  That all goes back to the, “best to keep your mouth shut” culture in China.  When you hear of all this nonsense like the Cultural Revolution and so on, you begin to understand why the culture unfortunately developed this way.  I’m hoping there are no nonsensical Good Samaritan laws on the books though.  I didn’t think these were real, but just looked it up on Wikipedia.  How’s that for a change of topic?