Copper's Cycle

Every day there's a copper on the corner of Wanghai Lu with a bicycle.

The cycle is there morning, noon and night with its red / blue lights endlessly flashing and a long truncheon fitted next to the rear wheel. Well, in fact he's not a real copper more like a glorified security guard on a rather low salary. Although, he does come under the jurisdiction of thePolice. In this case Nanshan Police, Shenzhen.

Another regular sight. Whoever is sent to serve as sentry they seem to be, more often than not, playing with their mobile. It's almost a national obsession!

It's rare to see anybody on the tube (metro) reading a newspaper let alone a book. The mobile phone is the eternal source of entertainment.


Something else I discovered today. Under China's One Child Policy the fine a family has to pay for having a second child is 215,000 RMB (£10 / US$16).

Of course, if you don't have this kind of money kicking around, as many families don't, your child will not get permission to go to school, receive state benefits or healthcare. Which is rather limited anyhow.

The man who related this story to me also has a friend who's in the police and he had an extra child. What happened?

His superiors spread the charge out amongst his work colleagues in his unit. Which equated to about 6000 RMB per person.

Now, I'm sure this made him shockingly unpopular among his fellow officer but it would have been a very good deterrent to others.

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