i have not, it turns out, been doing the job i thought i was doing for the last six months, despite what i would have sworn by at any time throughout that period. despite my countless memories of walking to the office, and despite the six deposits into my bank account since arriving to this city, i have never been employed by what up until now i would have called my current employer. instead, i’ve been told, i’ve been working as a paid consultant for a company that, from what i can gather, manufactures medicine. that aleve you’re taking may very well have passed through my skillful fine-tuning of the medicinal manufacturing process.

you can imagine my surprise when all of this was told to me by the police as i went in to get a new visa. i don’t even live in changzhou, it turns out, but rather a city called Wujin which though technically under the jurisdiction changzhou county is much nicer and with longer history. in fact in 2005 wujin was called the 8th best place to live in all of china. changzhou proper didn’t even place. i imagine my apartment is glorious. i’d say i played dumb, but there wasn’t much playing. meanwhile my companion, one of my coworkers in charge of dealing with us pesky foreigners, was visibly squirming in her seat next to me. and that’s when it clicked.

what she neglected to told me, because for the last six months she’s been ‘forgetting’, was that i am in fact an employee of this medicine company, owned by a relative of the guy who heads up my ‘real’ employment. when they updated my visa, they did it with a different company in a different city and never told me, probably hoping it would never come up again. which is astounding on so many levels.

i asked her if in 2 years i’m at a police station in china and they ask my employment history, if this medicine company will come up again. she said yes, that it’s part of my work history in china. i then told her i’d be needing it’s name so i can add it to my resume. meanwhile some of the chinese staff with whom i work think that foreigners are naïve bordering on stupid for believing the things they tell us. if that’s the case then i’m becoming less naïve every day.

i can say with absolute confidence that being a consultant for medicine manufacture is by far the least demanding job i’ve ever had. i’ll be sad to leave it as today is also my first day at the place i’ve been sitting for the last 6 months.