Jail in China Part 1/2 (2018)

    

        After having had my profound self-realization in Korea, I knew that it was time to start planning my exit out of China. When I told my boss (We called him "J-Dog") about my plans and desires to enter the circus world, he quickly regurgitated each and every fear that I had already thought of. Questions like: How long did I expect my circus career to last? If they (the Yoga studio) gave me more money, would I stay? Did I need more vacation time? What if I got injured while as a circus artist, then what? Of course, some of these were logical questions to ask, but logic wasn't the compass I wanted to be guided by at that moment. There is a time and place to follow the heart and a time and place to follow the mind. This moment was one in which the heart needed to be in the driver's seat. Despite having these valid questions, it wasn't the time to have to know the answers. If I had waited to try and have all the answers before acting, then I'd have never acted. Now was the time to embrace the mysterious void before me and to happily jump in. As life happens, there will always be more questions that lead to more questions. If we only move forward when we have everything figured out, then we will only be running on an existential treadmill that usurps all of our energy and effort only to stay in the same place.

After having the conversation with my boss about my departure, he told me that there was one last Yoga teaching event that I needed to do. The event was a major marketing stunt at one of the gigantic shopping centers in the city where we lived (Xiamen). There were going to be thousands of onlookers who would see us teach a live Yoga class. There were life-sized posters of us, videos of us on every screen possible, and an insane amount of pamphlet materials that were being distributed with our faces on it. From the beginning, Mr. B (my colleague and friend who I was teaching with) and I had our doubts about the whole situation. Let me remind you that we were there on tourist visas. This meant that we weren't allowed to actually be doing what we were doing, teaching Yoga for work. When we questioned J-Dog (our boss) about obtaining the necessary work visas, he always pushed it aside, saying that it was too much work and that we would never have problems. This is also the reason why every three months we took a short boat trip to Taiwan. This allowed us to get our tourist visas renewed and to return to China the same day to continue our work. Being that I needed to make some coin, I never pushed my boss on the issue (big mistake). Besides, we were just teaching studio yoga classes under the radar, it was low risk and we didn't imagine that anyone actually cared.. That is until this event...

We were nervous and had our doubts about the whole situation, but in the end, my colleague and I just said "fuck it, let's do it." And we went full power into it. We each taught a class in the middle of one of the biggest commercial centers in the city. There was no discretion about any part of the situation. Me being me, I was doing handstands to attract more and more people. I even made my first handstand number on a chair. I performed it as an opening act for the event (it was a terrible performance but it worked nonetheless). Being a foreigner was already reason enough for people to stop and observe what was going on, but throw in some dramatic handstands with some gnarly Yoga asanas and people were sure to stop and observe what was happening. It felt very awkward and slightly wrong for how the company was using me as some poster boy to get business, but in that moment I didn't care. I understood my role and the mission that was before me. I went all in.

The classes went great. We killed it. The people were hyped. The whole stage/ area was packed to the brim with people and we were able to enroll many more students to our Yoga studios. The mission was seeming like a grand success. My colleague and I smiled at each other as we were walking off the stage. Our smiles quickly faded when we noticed three police officers approaching us. We looked at each other and in unison said, "ohhhhh shit"...

Immediately we were being interrogated, which of course we had no idea how to respond to because we didn't speak Chinese. There were, however, two words that we did understand. They were the only words that the officers were saying in English. "Work permit?". "Work permit?". "Work permit?". We knew we were in trouble. Our translator walked over and quickly mediated on our behalf. She innocently said to us, "It's no problem. It's no problem. Just show them your work visas." At that moment, it became very clear. The only other person who knew about our lack of paperwork was J-Dog (our boss). None of the other employees knew, and therefore our lack of paperwork was a surprise to everyone...and because no one else knew, they happily handed us over to the police. The police officers took our passports and noted all of our documentation numbers and names. It was official. We were no longer hidden or under the radar. The Chinese police officially knew about us. There was no more hiding. They demanded that we show up first thing in the morning at the local police station. They had some questions, and we had better have some answers…