Beijing launches 'police English' booklet for Olympics

The scene: Beijing. The time: The 2008 Summer Olympics. You are a policeman and your city is swarming with millions of foreigners – most of whom can’t speak a word of Chinese.

How do you overcome the language barrier to:

a) Keep reporters away from Falun Gong protests?

b) Arrest a possible terrorist bomber?

c) Deal with drunken tourists without causing an international incident?

Enter Olympic Security English, a 252 page textbook that teaches police to deal with foreigners – and highlights the unique worries of China’s tightly controlled communist system.

Along with such innocuous topics as giving subway directions and sightseeing advice, the book takes on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, human rights and the restive Muslim region of Xinjiang in the country’s far west.

In a lesson titled Searching for Bombs, a fictitious chef from India has been implicated by a tipster as a possible bomber.

Police: “Someone reported you had a bomb here. We’re here to search your room.”

Foreigner: “Nonsense. I’m working as a cook. Why would I keep a bomb? Go ahead and search. I’m an honest man. I can only make Indian pancake. I’ve never seen a bomb.”

Police: “Shut up so we can finish our search.”

The cobalt-blue guide is filled with other unsavoury topics such as dealing with foreigners involved in brawls, shoplifting, drug peddling and illegal arms possession.

“This book, which puts the Olympic games at the core, has a fruitful content,” says the editor’s note.

“It mainly focuses on the handling of every possible problem – via legal means – that may happen during security work for the games.”

It adds: “It’s easy to learn, remember and look up.”

Still, the lessons can be demanding, with a vocabulary of 2,500 words and 100 phrases needed by police – “be too familiar with the girl,” “blow into the intoxilyzer” and “obstructing the discharge of official duty.”

The manual is part of a multibillion- pound facelift for Beijing launched after the Chinese capital was picked in 2001 to host the Olympics.

The city is building 16 new stadiums and gymnasiums and hundreds of miles of expressways and underground lines.

Beijing is promising to cut pollution and trying to stamp out littering, spitting and the raising of livestock in urban areas. Taxi drivers are being given crash courses in tourist English.

In the police English textbook’s first chapter, an officer confronts a foreign reporter in an exercise entitled “How to Stop Illegal News Coverage.”

The journalist says he is gathering information about Falun Gong and is detained – an event that might come as a surprise to reporters sent to cover the Olympics, but which is routine for correspondents who live in China.

The policeman says Falun Gong “is beyond your coverage and illegal. As a foreign reporter in China, you should obey China law and do nothing against your status.” The reporter is taken away to “clear up this matter.”

Another journalist is released after police search his bags and check his identification.

In another lesson, a British woman from Hong Kong is detained on suspicion of car theft. She insists: “You’re violating my human right. I protest!”

The policeman responds: “No tricks! Don’t move!”

Loutish behaviour by an inebriated tourist is nipped in the bud in the lesson titled “Dissuading Foreigners from Excessive Drinking.”

“I want a girl to drink with me!” the man declares after a security guard tells him he’s had enough.

The guard warns the man to take his advice or he’ll call the police. “Mind your manners!” the guard chides.

The tourist demurs.

“I won’t drink anymore,” he says. “I’m sorry.”