My Time in Jail

I haven’t really shared this story with many people, so you probably don’t know about the time I spent in jail this summer. It was towards the end of camp in China, and a small group of us were out at night. We were supposed to just go over to the swimming pool to pick up the life jackets that needed to be stored until next year. On the way there, we stopped and started talking about the bamboo scaffolding that had been setup to remodel some of the buildings. I asked my Chinese friend if we could climb the scaffolding (expecting to hear him say no). Well, he didn’t say no, instead he walking over to the scaffolding and climbed up a few feet and said, “Sure, we can climb it!”

I have to explain something about China. During the last 5 years, I have learned that a lot of things that we would consider illegal in US are really ok in China. Like the time we were going to jump off a tower into a lake. My good friend Adam was in the process of climbing around the chain link fence to get into the tower when we heard a village local start yelling and running towards us. Of course in the US those are clear signs that you are doing something wrong. Well, when villager got close enough we heard him yell some things to our translator. She relayed the message up to us, “He says that there is a nail you can take out and open the door. You don’t need to climb around the fence.”

So now you can see why I would think about climbing the bamboo scaffolding. My Chinese friend had just gone up a few feet and then came back down. I decided to go further. I was up about 20 feet when I heard the bamboo crack. I kind of panicked a little and looked down to see a long drop. It definitely would hurt. Fortunately there was a window up at that level that led to a breezeway in the building. I climbed in and made my way for the stairs. Well, little did I know that now I looked like a robber, especially because it was so late. Things got worse when I got to the bottom of the stairway. The gate across the opening was locked.

I look at my friends who were on the opposite side of the gate and told them I’d get someone’s help to unlock the door. (That was a very bad idea) The lady I found in the building panicked and wondered what I was doing in her building. I led her to the gate where my friends were so she could hear my story. That didn’t help at all. My Chinese friend couldn’t get the story out without laughing for almost the whole time he was talking. And you don’t have to understand Chinese to see that SHE WAS NOT HAPPY.

Finally, the lady left for her room to get a key. Little did I know that she was calling the cops. After several minutes passed, I looked at my friend and asked him what was going on. He said, “I think she is calling the police”

So that’s when I decided that I would not await public embarrassment. I decided to make my way back for the scaffolding. That didn’t work too well because when I walked passed my jail keeper she started shouting at me and then grabbed my arm so I couldn’t leave. So there I am, far away from home, exhausted from just finishing camp, in the middle of the night, with a Chinese lady hanging on my arm and yelling at me. And that’s when it hits you, “Wow, this is different.” So I walked back down to my locked gate and sat there looking at my friends who “kept me encouraged”. After a few moments, the campus police came and heard the lady’s story, looked over at me, said a few words, and then walked away. The jail lady grudgingly pulled out her keys and opened the gate. And that was the last time I’ll ever climb bamboo past 15 feet.