English Quiz 202

(English Quiz 202)

1. The first thing the snakehead wants to say is that he isn't some slave driver or gangster. He is, he says, a respectable businessman from Fujian's interior who settled in the Czech Republic in the early 1990s and started a textile import company. That was just after the Berlin Wall had fallen, and it was easy for an enterprising Fujianese to sell cheap cloth to Czechs. Today, he has upgraded his trading from cloth to people. Willing people, he insists. "There are too many people in China, so we have to go abroad to make money," he says. "And in Europe, the people are old or lazy, so they need to import cheap labor." For the past seven years the snakehead has been searching for the equilibrium between supply and demand. This time, he's back in Sanming to shore up old contacts and size up new customers, sitting in a private room in one of the city's many tea houses. The call from Little Lin was like any other. Little Lin had heard from friends that the snakehead didn't cheat his customers. Could he please help him, too? The snakehead agreed. "It's a dangerous business," says the 36-year-old. "But in the end you can make people happy, so that's a good end to the story."
Q: 試翻 "Today, he has upgraded ... , he insists."

2. Governments and law enforcement agencies don't view the snakehead's activities so favorably. Illegal immigrants have little recourse should the snakehead make off with their deposit, and are vulnerable to Dickensian conditions in the places where they must work long hours to pay off their debt. Knowing the snakehead or his family personally diminishes such risks, and most Fujianese migrants are only one degree removed from the person they will pay to get them abroad. "This isn't like cocaine, where there's one boss in Colombia who directs the whole business," says Frank Pieke, the director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Oxford University, who has written a book on Fujianese migration to Europe. "Instead, you have a very loose network of independent people with close local connections. This creates a sense of trust that results in stable commercial transactions."
Q: 試翻 "Illegal immigrants have little recourse ... pay off their debt."

3. The odyssey begins in Fujian, where the snakehead's contacts in the local Public Security Bureau help the customer get a Chinese passport. Then it's on to Beijing to apply for a visa to Russia, which easily grants visas to Chinese. The trip to Moscow is the simple part of the journey. The snakehead then takes the person's passport. He says it's for safety — it's harder to deport someone without ID — but, clearly, holding the document gives him power over his clients. From Russia, the Fujianese cross the forested and poorly patrolled Ukrainian and Slovakian borders by foot at night. Then they are stuffed into a minivan — with up to 12 Chinese crouched in the back — for the trip into the Czech Republic. Passage through Eastern Europe is secured by Ukrainian and Vietnamese gangsters. "These routes used to be for drugs and weapons," says the snakehead, who does not accompany his clients on their journey. "Now they're for Chinese people, too." On average, the snakehead can sneak three people through the Czech Republic a month, but he says a network of traffickers from Sanming brings in a total of 1,400 Fujianese a year, in addition to 600 others from Zhejiang, another coastal Chinese province. "It's a good business, more lucrative than textiles," he says. "But if the people get caught, then I lose all the money I paid in advance."
Q: 試翻 "The odyssey begins ... get a Chinese passport."

4. Often, along their way from Eastern and Western Europe, the migrants — sometimes 50 at a time — are herded into safe houses where they must wait for the right conditions to continue their trip. Besides packets of instant noodles and a rice cooker, there's not much in the way of furnishings. "Staying there is the toughest part," says the snakehead. "When you're in the house, it's easy to get depressed because you have time to think about your family and the things that might go wrong." He estimates that 10% of people crack. They are taken to an area near the Chinese embassy or consulate and told to find their own way there. The fee, in this case, is not collected. "I try to pick people who are young and strong in character," he says. "Otherwise, I lose out." From the Czech Republic into Germany and beyond — the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Britain — the migrants are switched from minivans to sedans. The Dover disaster alerted police to bigger vehicles, says the snakehead, so it's wise to opt for small cars. The drivers he uses are German, and not a single one, he says, has ever been stopped. The journey takes about two months door-to-door. Once the customer gets to his destination, he calls his family, who then hand over to the snakehead's local contact the smuggling fee — usually a combination of savings and money borrowed from underground banks. The immigrant will then begin slowly working off the debt through poorly paid labor — a process that can take from two to 10 years. "Most people pay off their debts," says the snakehead. "It's not because we threaten them. It's because we know their family and their friends back home. People don't want to lose face in front of them."
Q: 試翻 "He estimates that ... is not collected."