The Chinese Mafia Escape

boosttravel — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 08:24:36 +0000

I received a call just after 6pm on a Saturday afternoon whilst enjoying a cold beer, sitting on my balcony, and wasting my weekend away. It was my brother-in-law Anthony calling from New Zealand.

Since moving to Australia 8 years earlier I had only seen him a few times and the last was over three years ago. This call was somewhat of a surprise but not as much of a surprise as the proposal he had for me.

Anothony and my sister have a business that most could not stomach but a business that will never be without customers. They own a funderal home, not just one but three, along with some show rooms for coffins and tomb stones.

Anothony had recently received an unexpected fax from a company in China that could produce better quality workmenship on tombstones made from the finest marble and granite from Spain, Africa and India at a cost 5 times less then his normal suppliers.

Well what do you do? Oh course you start to do the sums and cost out whether shipping from China would indeed be a cheaper option. However how do you really know what the workmenship and quality is like unless you check the factory and products out first.

Well here lies the proposal.

Anothony, “Jed, want to come to China”.
Me, “What!”
Anothony, “Do you want to come to China with me”.
Me, “Sure, why not”.

Anthony has always been one for getting straight to the point, and I’ve always been the type that speaks before thinking. The deal was done not that I needed any convincing.

He briefly told me why we were going there and that I needed to be on a plane to New Zealand in the next 4 days. Needless to say those next few days were a little hectic for me. I needed to book a flight home, prepare a visa, organise someone to cover my shifts at work and pack my bags.

Being a procrastinater my bags took the longest out of everything, I was still packing my bags when the taxi showed up.

I arrived at Auckland airport at 10am to be welcomed by my good old friends the New Zealand Customs. Apparantly I fit the profile because everytime I fly home I am pulled aside, questioned, bags searched and on the odd occassion when they feel like it strip searched.

Admittedly my passport does resemble a drug trafficking passport with multiple trips to Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. Questions aside I started to repack my bags which know looked like a laundry basket and headed out to the arrival gates.

Mum knows the procedure when picking me up and arrived a couple minutes after I walked out the gates.

Mum, “You haven’t been waiting long have you?”
Me, “No just got out”.
Mum, “Well it’s 12 O’clock so how ’bout we get some lunch?”.

We ate and then headed home to see the rest of the family.

The next day Anthony arrived with bags packed. Our flight was scheduled for that evening so we talked a little more about our trip and what we needed to organise.

I’m not sure why Anthony wanted me to come along. I’m a risk consultant and have travelled throughout Asia for the last 7 years on business and holidaying so I knew alittle about the culture, customs and the language but nothing about marble and tombstones.

China would be a new journey and somewhere where I had never ventured to before. Needless to say I was a little nervous.

Our itinery was to fly into Hong Kong and meet up with a friend, see the sights for a couple of days then catch a train into China where we could get another plane to a place called Xiamen on the south-east coast.

After arriving in Hong Kong we caught a taxi to our hotel and called Max our friend. Now I could write a book about Max but in short he is a friend of Anthony’s and like me also gets detained at customs (apparantly justified). We organised that Max meet us at our hotel which we were only staying at for one night because he had made prior arrangements for us.

Max has traveled to China seeking out business oppurtunities (that’s what he calls it) for the last couple of years and had a few contacts here in Hong Kong that could help us when we got to China.

At about 9pm Max and his Chinese translator Alan showed up. Alan was not your typical Chinese person. Though he was short and skinny with sleek black hair he had some different characteristics to your usual chinese native. They were quite noticable because it was tattoos across his face, fingers, and hands. Some of a spiders web in the curve of his pointer finger and thumb, tears ran down from his right eye, and then there were some words that I couldn’t make out too well due to fear I felt when I looked at him.

Now I grew up in a rough neighbourhood of South Auckland where muggings, and robberies occured on a daily basis and gangs had large concrete and steel fortresses impenerable by police rather the army had to be called in to smash the walls down with their armoured vehicles when there was a ‘bust’.

I’m otherwords I’m used to looking at rough necks and dealing with criminals but looking at this Chinese guy really instilled a sense of fear in me and by the look of Anthony’s face he felt the same.

We introduced ourselves with a smile and asked Max what the plans were. He told us we were going out for dinner and that tomorrow we could check out the sights by ourselfs because he had ‘business’ to do. The way he said I knew no questions had to be asked.

We all jumped into Alan’s 7 series BMW and headed off to the restaurant. Dinner was quite different. The first five dishes were: pig liver soup, ox stomach in a red curry sauce, fish dumplings, crocodile stew, and fried pork and green veges. The next three courses were of the paua (abalone) that Max had smuggled into Hong Kong with his carry on luggage.

They don’t check everyone that comes through customs in Hong Kong, they only check for ‘bird flu’ using a special camera that watches everyone coming out of the gates. Customs agents watch people on a tv monitor for the tell tale signs.

If it shows up all red they pull you aside for questioning. The girl sitting next to us on the train we were on was pulled aside because she had a cold and was coughing. Haven’t noticed any body parts falling off yet so I think I’m alright.

Like I said before I’ve been through Asia and knew what to expect so said I was a vegetarian giving me a good excuse just to drink whiskey and watch Anthony do the courtesous thing and make out he was enjoying it. Oh the death stares I got from him that night.

The next morning Anthony and I did some sight seeing. The usual thing like going up some mountain in a pulley train and looking across to the city. Sadly though the smog is so bad that you can’t see it. Luckily an old man on top of the mountain had some pictures of what it is meant to look like so we bought one and headed back down and over to where we started.

We looked around the markets and then walked some stairs that are meant to be famous because they go on and on forever. After about five minutes of it we gave up and just did some window shopping because Hong Kong is far from being cheap.

That night we went out for dinner again. Anthony ate and I drunk whiskey. Alan was impressed at how much I could consume and thought he would try and out drink me. Many people have tried and failed. Alan joined the club.

The next morning we met at the train station to go to Gongchow which is about an hour away from Hong Kong. We gave Alan some money and he got the tickets. I headed to the duty free shop and bought a couple of bottles of Grey Goose vodka and a carton of cigarettes. If I’m going to be a vegetarian for the rest of the trip then I’m going to enjoy it.

When we arrived at the station we were ushered by Alan to his friends that were waiting to pick us up. Thankfully they didn’t look as bad as Alan and didn’t have any tattoos covering their bodies but they did look suspicious so Anthony and I kept a close eye on them. (Like an eye on someone in a completely foreign country is going to help).

He introduced us to them and said, “Welcome to ‘my’ town”. His friends laughed and we weren’t quite sure about what he meant so we casually got into their merecedes 4×4 with it’s leather seats and dvd screens behind each seat.

They drove us to their apartment. First we thought ‘their apartment’ was one floor in a big apartment. Once we arrived we quickly realised that their apartment was the entire building, two of them, both over 50 stories high over looking a wide river and the major city in the distance.

The car stopped alongside the apartment at a security gate. The guards looked in and respectfully greeted the driver and Alan. Alan leaned across the drivers side and said, “These are my guests, be sure to look after them”.

Walking into our room on the 43rd floor was like walking into a palace. It was decorated with paintings of chinese philospers, white marble sculptures, flower vases higher than me and decorated with gold finish. We both looked at each other and thought maybe our first impressions were wrong.

Looking out the window people looked like little ants racing and scurrying around everywhere looking for their next sweet meal.

I asked Alan, “What is that”. Pointing down to the ground.

He peared out the window and said, “Thats the pool”.

I said, “The pool, how fucking big is it”.

He said, “Well take a closer look. That’s actually a container ship that we parked on the side of the river and converted the top level into a pool and the bottom levels into restaurants”.

I said, “WOW! Can anyone use it?”

He said, “Nope thats just for our apartment.”

I asked how hard it was to get approval for something like that. He smiled and said, “Not hard at all”. His friends laughed.

No kidding this pool was so big it was actually a water park with huge slides you have to get in a raft to go down them on. Go down without one and you’ll no doubt drown from the amount of water that flows through it. It was HUGE!

That night the (we’ll start calling them the mafia now because that’s who they were) ‘Mafia’ said we were going out to an American restaurant for steak. Anthony smiled and looked at me knowing he won this round.

Sitting at the dinner table I ate french fries and salad while he devoured a prime cut t-bone steak, with the fat still sizzling when it was served, smelling of pure 100% beef and black pepper sauce. My mouth is watering right now just remembering the juices that ran onto the plate as he cut his serated knife through the flesh.

After the meal we drove around some place in China we had no idea about. We were lost after we took the first left out of the security gate let alone knowing where we were right now. All we knew was we had driven for over an hour and in what direction who knows.

Needless to say the mafia did and we arrived at some massage parlour. We were escorted into a beautiful big room with flowing waterfalls, plush lounges, hues of deep red colours over the walls and curtins that flowed through the room.

Anthony protested all the way into the room and while he sat on the couch saying that he had a wife. Luckily I was single so happily followed.

Next a parade of beautiful, young, asian girls dressed in all sorts of clothing looking like teachers, nurses, rock stars, the librarian, and young school girl. I choose the school girl and Anthony sat on the couch looking into his hands. I don’t know what happened to him after that because I was lead to another room for lessons. (And I’ll leave it at that).

After a couple of hours I walked out to meet with the others. Anthony was still on the couch entertaining himself by counting matches and eating the coffee lollies that were left on the bench. There was about twenty empty lollie packets on the bench and on the floor in front of him.

He said, “You know I’ve counted six boxes of matches and everyone’s got 43 matches in them, amazing huh?” The things you do to keep yourself occupied.

We waited another 30 minutes before Max came out with complete shock on his face, almost ghostly white looking. Hurriedly he said, “We need to get out of here”. It seems that the human body is not meant to impale large objects for a lengthy time. Needless to say she was tipped well and he paid for the dry cleaning.

At this point Anthony has almost lost it. Don’t forget this trip is meant to be all business and we haven’t done anything about it. I’m not helping much but I’m a good listener. Hmmm, maybe that’s my purpose.

It’s now about 2am as we drive to another restaurant where we are meant to meet some business partners of Alan’s that might be able to help us with buying marble. We arrive and they are already setted at this banquet table that seats about 15 people. Our group make up about 8 of them.

Anthony leans over my shoulder and whispers, “I hope I’m not shouting”.

I give him a nudge and say check out the fingers.

Anthony looks and notices why he got such a quick thrust of my elbow into to his lower rib cage. They were all wearing the same big gold rings with different coloured stones in them. Some with ruby red stones, some bright emerald green, a shiny opaque blue stone and an older man with a deep purple stone.

I looked at Anthony and said I’ll meet you in the toilet in five minutes. Okay, now I realised what my purpose was. Assess the risk, consult, make a decision, consider the consequences and take the right course of action.

Anthony showed up just as I was washing my hands.

Me, “Anthony, we need to escape”.

Anthony, “What are we going to do”.

Me, “I’m going to get the Grey Goose out of the car”.

Anthony, “Why?”

Me, “I’m thirsty”.

Anthony, “Seriously dick”.

Me, “I’ll ask for the keys to the car to get the Grey Goose, when I go out the door make another excuse to leave the table to the bathroom because of the food you ate yesterday. “We’ll steal the car!”

Anthony, “What about Max”.

Me, “Oh yeah, okay what I’m going to do is get them drunk”.

Anthony, “That’s alot of people to out drink”.

Me, “Nah man, I just have to get Alan and his driver drunk. That way they either drop us off home or someone else will drive his car. When we get home you’ll pack our bags hide them under the bed and wake me up at about 6am”.

Anthony, “Why the fuck am I going to pack your bags and wake you up”.

Me, “Because I’ll be too drunk”.

Anthony, “Oh okay”.

After the first three courses of battered fish, roast pigeon, and stir fried silk worm larvae had been eaten I excused myself to get the bottle of vodka. Alan’s driver assisted me out the restaurant and to the car. Not helping with anything just watching. (Hmmm lucky this wasn’t our final plan I thought to myself).

I walked back in with both bottles and said to the guests at the table it is customary to drink shots of vodka with each course in our country. Now considering each meal we had eaten to date consisted of about fourteen courses we were going to get drunk.

I asked the waitress in sign language that I needed some shot glasses. She understood and soon returned. I poured nips for everyone and yelled out Cumji which I think is Mandarin for ‘bottoms up’ or what I would say, ’skull’.

They all cheered and tipped their glasses. I quickly filled them again. Making mine a little smaller each time and theres alittle bigger. After a while it was obvious that our driver and Alan were starting to feel the warm effects of drinking overproof alcohol but the Grey Goose was running out.

Quick thinking I asked Alan haven’t you got anything stronger here in China. He waved his hand at the waiter, yelled something out I didn’t understand and with a quick flick of her apron she had raced off and returned with two bottles of a type of rice wine.

He said pick one. I grabbed the first one, cracked the cap and poured a shot, yelled out Cumji and drunk it. The taste was tart, very strong, and definately alcoholic. I grabbed the second bottle and did the same, cracked the cap, poured a shot, yelled out Cumji and drunk it.

I yelled out, “They’re both great. I’ll have them both”. The men cheered, and waved their glasses in the air. I was the life of the party but needed to keep my head straight because who knows what was coming.

By the ninth course Anthony was bloated from all the food, Alan’s head was hanging inches above his pork intestine soup, the driver’s blood shot eyes were hanging out of his head, all the guests were cheering and I was yelling, “Cumji”.

I took a good look around the table looking at how everyone was travelling and then I excused myself to go to the bathroom not before slipping a butter knife into my pocket and hiding a salt shaker in the middle of my palm.

I poured all the salt into one hand, turned the tap on and drunk the disguisting concoction out of my cupped hands. Almost instantly my stomach began to convulse and I started to vomit the burning solution of alcohol and salt. I throw up so much it came out of my nose, and I started to cry tears as I gagged on the taste.

A man from the table walked in and saw me. He quickly raced out to where the others were still eating at the table. Anthony came in first and said, “Awesome acting”.
I gave him the ‘finger’ just before I throw up on his shoes.

One of the men wearing a emerald ring came in and said, “Someone is going to drive you and Mr Alan home”.

I gave Anthony a wink and just before leaving the restaurant yelled Cumji before drinking the defrosted ice bucket left on the a nearby table. They all cheered and I almost sobered up immediately. The plan was working. A ride home, both Alan and the driver were drunk and I was having a great time.

By the time we walked through the main doors past the security it was 4:40am. Alan fall over in the elevator and the driver was holding him up. We got out on the 43rd floor and Alan and the driver continued up to one of the penthouses.

We walked into our rooms and I fell on the bed saying wake me up in an hour. Anthony packed our bags. In what felt like five minutes sleep I felt Anthony dragging me off the bed by my feet. I don’t wake up very easily and this is how Anthony told me he had to wake me up.

With a thud onto the floor I opened my eyes to see Anthony holding my suitcase handle out saying, “Hurry up lets go”.

I said, “What time is it?”

He said, “4.45″.

I said, “I said wake me up in an hour”.

He said, “Hurry up were leaving now”.

I pulled myself off the floor and headed towards the elevator doors. I leaned against the wall with my head still trying to get another few seconds sleep before the elevator arrived.

Ding! I awake to the doors opening and the golden coloured interior shining out of the elevator doors with its bright lights.

We both enter and press ground floor. It’s a slow ride all the way down and at about the fourth floor a rush of blood comes to my head.

“What about the security guards”. I say.

Anthony, “What about them?”

Me, “They’re are here to keep people in not people out”.

Anthony, “We’ll have to sneak past them”.

I pull the butter knife I stole from the restaurant out of my pocket.

Anthony, “What are you going to do with that”.

I shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know, just in case”.

The door opens and quietly we sneak out the elevator, carrying the bags so you don’t hear the noise of the wheels rolling. We see two guards sitting in their office and another in the distance. We quicken our pace as we get closer to the main doors when accidently Anthony almost trips and scuffs his shoe making a loud squeak. The guards look around only to see us running through the doors towards the unmaned security gates.

Thank-god for cigarettes. The guard had left his post and was casually walking, smoking on his cigarette. The two guards raced out screaming to the guard to stop us. We ran harder, faster towards the gates, not knowing what we were going to do once we got past them.

Ducking our heads under the gate as were ran out we started to run down the road, no one around except for two crazy white people in the wrong part of town and three security guards chasing them.

100 metres and a car pulls up in front of us. Thinking were done for it I make for the car with the butter knife only to have an old man stick his head the window yelling, “Taxi taxi mister”.

I jump in and hold the door open for Anthony. He throws his bag in and I yell, “Go! Go!”

The taxi takes off with Anthony still hanging out the taxi, feet dragging down the road. I gun shot hails over the car as we round the corner.

The taxi driver turns and says, “Where you off to mister”.

We reply simutaneously, “The airport”.

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