"Why won't you consider my offer? You're being a terrible friend."
The words were barely out of my mouth before I felt uncomfortable. Since things had already reached this point, I gathered up my things and stood to leave.
"No, you have to buy something before you go. I'm making you buy—you must buy!" Sunny's tone had turned distinctly unfriendly, as if she were leveraging the fact that I'd come for a romantic encounter to extort me.
"I'm sorry, but I really don't want to buy anything today. I'm leaving. Goodbye."
As I walked toward the door, I thought I heard someone outside. I paused, then reached for the door handle—but the door was swiped open from the outside. It was yanked wide open, and two burly men stood before me. One was a Myanmar man, a bit shorter than me, about 5'7". The other had lighter skin—probably Chinese—and was a full head taller than me, easily over 6'3".
I understood immediately. Something was very wrong.
Neither man said a word. They shoved me back into the room and stepped inside. I backed up several paces, calculating how to protect myself if things got physical. The Myanmar man, seeing I was back inside, went back out and pulled the door shut from the outside with a heavy thud.
I was screwed! This was an obvious shakedown! I cursed myself for walking right into their trap.
I instantly remembered that I'd told Uncle Harvey my room number. I pulled out my phone and quickly sent him two characters:
"Help me."
It took only two seconds to type, but the tall man bellowed, "What are you doing! Phone down!" He reached for my phone. I backed up another step and shoved the phone back into my pocket.
The tall man stood menacingly close, staring me down, looking ready to throw a punch at any moment.
"It's fine," Sunny said in a commanding tone. "You two wait outside."
Surprisingly, they obeyed her, filing out one after the other. The door was left slightly ajar, with the two men standing guard outside.
"Here's the deal. You looked at the stones and you're not buying. That won't work. You must buy at least one piece before you leave." Sunny's tone was still commanding.
"Pick one yourself."
I was stuck. This was coercion.
My phone buzzed, but I couldn't take it out. I knew it had to be Uncle Harvey calling. My only option was to pick the cheapest stone and buy it, then they'd probably let me go. Consider it paying to avoid disaster.
I scanned the stones again. There was a small Houjiang piece that was probably the cheapest.
"How much for this one?"
"Ten million."
"Excuse me?" I was about to say this was robbery, but stopped myself—with two goons staring me down, this literally was robbery.
"What are you thinking? Ten million kyat."
"Oh, right." I breathed a sigh of relief, then reconsidered. Ten million kyat was only about 50,000 RMB. For a palm-sized stone, that was absurdly overpriced. A piece like this in Ruili would go for a few thousand at most. And we were in Myanmar—it should be even cheaper. This was pure extortion. Who would pay that kind of price for such material?
"Is there anything cheaper?"
"No."
"Can you come down a bit?"
"No."
"I really don't have much money. Look—"
"Stop talking. Aren't you here to buy stones?"
"Hurry up," Sunny said, rolling her eyes as she sat back on the bed and scrolled through her phone. "Decide quickly!"
Should I just pay or what? I agonized for two minutes. Then one of the men outside knocked on the door, glanced nervously inside, and hissed urgently: "Police!" Then he vanished. From the adjacent room, I heard a door swipe open and immediately slam shut.
Sunny was visibly startled. She glared at me. I was panicking, and I glared right back. We stared each other down.
I thought: Could the police really be here?
I glanced toward the door, and my heart dropped: It really was the police! What were the chances of a police raid at this hour? There was only one explanation—Uncle Harvey had called them.
"Uncle Harvey, you bastard, you set me up!" I cursed inwardly. This was huge trouble. How would the police see this situation? If they misunderstood and arrested me, or sent me back to China, or even put it on my record—that would be a disaster. The thought flashed through my mind just as the officers came through the door.
Two Myanmar police officers entered, wearing gray uniforms with police badges on their chests and yellow-blue-red armbands on their sleeves. One stood at the doorway, half his body still outside; the other walked up to us and immediately launched into a long stream of Burmese. I understood nothing and was terrified. I looked at Sunny, but she sat in stony silence.
Seeing my confusion, the officer spoke to his colleague at the door in Burmese, then turned back to us. This time, in fluent Chinese: "Passports and identification, please."
Fortunately, I always kept my passport and ID on me when traveling. I dug out my passport. Sunny produced a Chinese passport. I remembered she'd claimed to be from Myanmar—that was clearly not trustworthy.
The officer looked at our documents and asked, "You're in the jade business?"
I said, "Yes, we're attending the emporium tomorrow."
The officer turned to Sunny. "And you?"
Sunny quickly said, "He's my boyfriend. We're on a date."
I was internally panicking, wondering how I'd clear my name after this. But to my surprise, the officer accepted this explanation, glanced at my emporium credentials, nodded, and said everything was fine. Then he left.
As the officer walked out, I used the opportunity to leave too. Sunny and her accomplices couldn't stop me.
I followed the officer out. At the end of the corridor, I looked back—Sunny's door was closed, and I heard nothing. Good. Time to get out of this place.
As soon as I stepped out the hotel entrance, I saw a familiar figure. Uncle Harvey was standing on the front steps, smoking a cigarette and watching me.
"Old Harvey! What kind of scheme was that?" I was about to interrogate him, but then realized it wasn't appropriate—too close to the hotel, too many eyes and ears. I swallowed my words.
"How was I supposed to know you'd fall for something like that?" Uncle Harvey rapped the back of my head, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.
I was both angry and helpless. I could only say, "Yeah, that girl was a scammer. They tried to force me to buy stones."
"I figured it was something like that. You got played by a woman. Get in the car."
We got into the taxi Uncle Harvey had called. On the drive back, I gave him a brief rundown. The driver didn't understand Chinese—he'd driven me there and come back with Uncle Harvey without finding anything unusual, still cheerful as ever. The route was exactly the same as before, but my mood had plummeted.
"Uncle Harvey, there's one thing I don't understand. Why did you call the police?"
"Hahaha, were you scared to death?"
"I really was terrified! How did you think to do that?"
"Because Myanmar law doesn't prohibit people from dating. You're a foreigner—the police won't make trouble for you. But they will investigate if someone's smuggling."
"But what excuse did you use to call them? And how did they arrive so fast?"
"Because, as I told you before," Uncle Harvey gave his signature smug smile, "the emporium is the only legal channel for jade exports. Myanmar law prohibits jade from leaving the country outside the emporium. So the police came to investigate 'jade smuggling.' When they saw you were heading to the emporium and had no intention of exporting jade, they didn't care whether two foreigners were dating in a hotel room."
"As long as they confirmed you weren't smuggling jade, their job was done."
"But they just had stones spread out on the bed. That looked suspicious, didn't it? No red flags?"
"Jade merchants spreading stones on hotel beds is the most normal thing in the world. Standard practice."
"I saw their inventory—not all of it was brick-grade trash," I said. "If they were pure scammers, they wouldn't have such good material. But if they're legitimate traders, having goons block the door is pretty ruthless."
"Zane, you're still too naive. People who operate on the Yunnan-Myanmar border never have just one face."
I didn't fully understand, but I replied, "The water's too deep..."
"Starting tomorrow, you'll see just how deep," Uncle Harvey said with a grin. "Go get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, we're entering the emporium."