Sex is risky when the police get involved. According to a recent Southern Metropolis Daily's report, a "Mr Zhang" made a booty call to an Internet friend, only to find himself arrested by the police afterward and brought into the Shilipu police station in Xi'an.
Zhang was given two choices. He could either take a fine, or risk, according to the police, a jail term of six months to two years. He decided to take the fine, and was told it was 8,000 yuan ($1,260) with a receipt, or 4,000 without. He paid his 4,000 and escaped the nightmare. Afterward he told the media his story.
His tale feels like it was written by a surrealist. Casual sex between friends is not prostitution, unless it starts with a negotiation over price. So what were the police basing their case on? If they were called whores, how would they feel? This was not only an abuse of police power but an insult to the two people involved. I guess friends now really need to think twice before they have sex.
The police claimed to Zhang that he would face a lengthy jail term if he didn't pay the fine. But according to the Law on Public Security Administration Punishment, Article 66, the maximum punishment for visiting a prostitute is 15 days of custody.
The police were either unaware of this law, or were simply extorting money from the hapless Zhang. Fines are an option, according the law, but they are supposed to be less than 5,000 yuan.
But I found rather amusing that the police were offering Zhang a 50 percent discount, if he forgot about the receipt. It reminds me of the offer the owner of my local diner always gives me. She says that if I don't take a receipt, I can get a 10 yuan discount.
Of course, she did not do it out of the goodness of her heart but for tax evasion purposes. I assume the police in Zhang's case were using similar reasoning.
The fine and discount triggered some old memories for me. When I was in high school, my father and I used to sell cabbage on the street. Back in those days, the chengguan (urban administrators) weren't around yet. Instead, the local authority for industry and commerce was in charge.
They usually did their job through fines. There were two choices; you could get a 1 yuan fine plus a receipt with the authority's stamp on it, or you could get a five mao fine, but no receipt.
At the time, we only made five mao for every two and a half kilos of cabbage we sold, so naturally some of the vendors chose the five mao fine. But the lawmen kept coming back, and if you didn't have the receipt, you'd get fined again. Some of us took the fine meekly, others went crazy at them. As small-scale as this was, I knew something was wrong.
In fact, I could see with my own eyes that our fines went into private pockets. I saw those lawmen paying their breakfast bill with our money, still smelling of my father's cabbage. I was angry, but helpless. I think I spat in their food once or twice, when they weren't looking.
These exchanges between law enforcement and street dealers are a manifestation of how the law is abused in this country.
It has a lot to do with law enforcement abusing their power, partly because there are too many holes in our system that allows this kind of abuse. However, if the people, even the lawbreakers, were less cooperative in these game, they wouldn't be so common and easy.
Clearly, law is never the first thing that comes to mind when Chinese people deal with the authorities. They always prioritize minimizing their losses, instead of investigating power and defending their legal rights. We can blame the lawmen for being parasites. Maybe they are, but maybe that's because we made them parasites. Zhang is a rare exception to our usual silence.
Power is like a stubborn donkey that doesn't work hard unless you whip it. The holes in our system will never repair themselves unless one day, despite the panic and fear, street dealers and visitors to prostitutes would rather take the worse punishment, as long as they could receive a proper receipt from the law.
It will cost money, and it will take courage, but if we let power offer a discount on the law today, tomorrow justice will be on sale.
The author is a freelancer based in Ningbo. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn