My name is David Ross and I spent nearly twenty years living in China (1994 – 2013). The bulk of my work there was helping Chinese people obtain tourist visas to enter the U.S. as undeclared immigrants. I have written a book which documents some of the people I met and the strange and typical situations I experienced through this work and my time in China.
My book, Red Camelot – Broken China, is about ordinary Chinese people living in a society shaped by an authoritarian political system. Readers will experience my typical day in China, helping women leave their unhappy lives through illegal immigration to the U.S. The marrow of the book is a deconstruction of today’s mainland Chinese society – living full-time there for nearly two decades, my knowledge of it is next to peerless. Indeed, the work I did there provided me a rare insight into the lives of regular Chinese people and their country. This is a story with controversy, an undercurrent of sex, and social brutality.
The following is an overview of the book.
Red Camelot – Broken China
Genre – Creative non-fiction
Luc is a long term foreign resident in China who works freelance helping Chinese people obtain tourist visas to enter the U.S. as undeclared immigrants. His clients are mostly middle aged women who want to leave China and the unspoken rules of their society. Luc’s story unfolds during 2008, a year of jarring contrasts between the Chinese Communist Party’s version of reality – Red Camelot, and Luc’s experiences – Broken China.
Luc’s life follows simple routines where bizarre incidents come off as seemingly normal: he returns home one day to find the One Child Policy Police at his door, he’s a bystander as a baby girl is orphaned at a hospital, a friend’s 12 year old daughter commits suicide, other friends have a daughter which was bought on the black market in babies and children, and on an outing he enjoys a bbq while listening to how the communist state’s vital human organ business functions. ‘Jason’, Luc’s foreign friend, has been in China a short time and often has problems. Luc helps Jason when he gets arrested at a brothel and, on another occasion, tends to him after he gets severely beaten by the police. Other characters are three Chinese families – two represent Chinese who exploit the Communist Party’s system and have become very wealthy through corruption. The third family represents the Communist Party’s orthodoxy and willful blindness to the very real problems in their family and around them. Luc’s work also includes procuring a Chinese passport through an unofficial channel, attempting to bribe an American vice-consul, and, posing as a U.S. State Department Chief Commercial Officer, Luc politely brow beats a Communist Party Shadow Mayor to push an American friend’s real estate deal through a corrupt bureaucracy.
Red Camelot – Broken China is a portrait of an unhappy, dysfunctional and fragile society in a year full of strident Communist Party propaganda campaigns like the Olympics – the nationalist centrepiece – among daily social issues and unrest such as, the baby milk powder scandal, upheaval in Tibet, and anti-government and anti-foreign protests. In a series of conversations, observations, overheard discussions, Luc engages with cab drivers, grandmothers picking up children at school, prostitutes, peasant farmers etc. – these moments capture the very basics of ordinary Chinese life. It is an intimate exchange with Chinese society otherwise unavailable to western readers in current non-fiction portraits of China, and no where will you find a book which covers this book’s binding thread – Chinese illegal immigration to the U.S.
Notes:
- When I first started writing I used first person narrative but found writing ‘I’ all the time felt immodest, so I switched to third person narrative and called my character ‘Luc’.
- All characters and events in the book are real. Not all the events took place in 2008. I have included some of the more interesting experiences during my nearly two decades in China.
- I set the book in 2008 because, in retrospect, people may regard that year as the Chinese Communist Party’s best – the Red Camelot version of truth. My story is an alternative narrative based on my own experiences which I call Broken China.
- Though this is creative non-fiction, most of it is completely factual, relatively free from creative license. The only chapter which is not is my Olympics chapter. I used the magical realism genre for it because that captures my perception of the event.
- In the book are references to classical Western and East Asian mythology, the Bible, Western and Chinese literature, politics, philosophy and various behavioral studies.
- Themes included are; environmental degradation, gender roles, wealth inequality, politics and propaganda, ex-pat life in China.
The corrosive forces of political corruption and social decay in Chinese society are illustrated in specific scenes throughout the chapters. Excessive wealth can be seen in the extravagant lifestyle and insulated residences of the upper-class which contrasts with the ordinary, the poor and the virtually enslaved. Environmental degradation is depicted by the ever present air pollution which results in respiratory illnesses and coughing and clearing of lungs and throats. The debasement of the once fecund farm land is coupled with the serious economic malaise seen in the massively wasteful urban over-development. Treatment of women is portrayed throughout the chapters in various social situations. The authoritarian communist police state and its mechanisms of control and enforcement are rendered in the pervasive propaganda and the busy state security organs. The preeminence of the Chinese Communist State is characterized by its consistent disregard for the people and natural resources. Political deceit is seen in the communist state's manipulation and exploitation of events like the Tibetan uprising, the Olympics, food poisoning scandals and the Sichuan earthquake. The cynicism regular Chinese people have for the system under which they live is expressed in their subdued voices.