Brave but dumb

One time while traveling in China with Mr Wong, we left my hotel, a small dinky thing with rooms that were unbelievable. Each room had open grill work near the ceiling of it’s sidewalls that opened to the rooms on each side, so you could actually hear the persons in their rooms talking and laughing. It was like sharing your room with them high sounding Chinese conversations with laughter and worst of all the smoke from their Chinese cigarettes. Because I now was used to unbelievable things happening while in China, I accepted it and  made sure to be out of the room as much as possible. Off we went, but not realizing that I would need my passport, I left it in my room. Well we traveled to our first manufacturer to check on a small order I had placed on my earlier visit. Naturally at that time there was no quality control and the product was very poorly made, so I rejected it all and showed them why. The manager saw what was wrong and promised to remake all and send  new samples to my Hong Kong office for approval. Naturally i was frustrated and upset because I had promised the customer who had given me this order to a prompt delivery. With this in my mind, my temper was raw, but we had a much bigger manufacturer to inspect,  in a town  in a different district from where we were. At the time, I didn’t realize that when you traveled from one district to another you had to show your passport, or other papers before you could enter. So after three hour a driving very slowly to go the forty mile to the next stop, I was even more frustrated. When we finally arrived at the entrance to the city, we were all asked to set out of the Mercedes to be inspected, and there was soldiers with machine guns standing across the road. Out we came and each of us were asked for our papers. When the soldier in charge came to me, I said I left my passport in my hotel. Naturally he couldn’t speak English and I could not speak Cantonese chinese, so Mr Wong explained who I was and I’m sure he said to placate the sodier that I was a stupid American and didn;t know about the Law. The soldier shook his head and said to Wong that we could not go any further and must go back. Wong Translated leaving out whatever was rude, saying the law was to had to show legal paper to enter and leave from one district to another, and that we had to go back because of my not having papers. I asked him if he could go and he replied that all of them in the car could go in. I then walked straight into a soldier in the middle of the road and was punish past him when he stuck the machine gun into my stomach. I looked in the eye and pointed to my eyes and said “Im an American and don’t need to follow Chinese rules”. It was a stalemate and the officer came over yelling at me, but I pushed through and dared them. Nothing happened, as the officer realized it would be a big mistake to stop me, so he stopped his men and I went through with the car eventually following me. I won’t ever forget how really stupid I was, because as the years went by I saw things that went on in China that were unbelievable. Men hanging from trees because they had done something very minor but illegal. WOW!!!