Note: The following is a guest post by my friend, Shannon Roy, a longtime Beijing resident who recently witnessed something that made a strong impression on him and asked if he could relay the story here.

A beginning?

It's a feature of expat life that one looks for signs and portents, even when they're not there. Recall looking at a zebra crossing, a ticket queue, a policeman on point duty before the Olympics and thinking to yourself, "Lordy Dennis! Falling off a log! Getting wet in the rain! Nookie in a cathouse!" And before you try the "No, I always thought they'd pull it off" response, let me remind you of that conversation we had prior. Yes, that conversation.

I remind you of these things so we're all perfectly clear about one thing: I understand that every single China prediction ever made (to this point) has been utterly wrong, often made demonstrably and embarrassingly wrong just after said prediction was uttered. Even so, I've got an anecdote. Even so, I think it's indicative of a tipping point. I am fortified against mortification by the knowledge that you can't be an Old China Hand without being wrong. In fact, isn't being provably wrong a requirement to land a lucrative Old China Hand book deal ?

Playing Paichusou the other day, as one does, I was required to provide a photocopy of several passport pages. In the small general-store-with-Chinese-characteristics a helpful passerby pointed out to me (flowers, cigarettes, prints, bingqiling, photocopies) I was quoted "1 kuai, 1 page" by the nice man with toner-stained fingers.

There was a short line, and I waited my turn. As I reached the head of the line and indicated which passport pages I needed duplicated, the door alarm made its annoying neener! neener! sound and a uniformed man walked into the store.

"How much for copies?" asked the senior policeman (to judge from his uniform).

"1 kuai, 1 page," responded the storekeep.

"Ha," barked the boy in blue. "That's the price for the proles. What's the police price?"

"1 kuai, 1 page," responded the storekeep.

"But I'm a policeman," said the policeman.

"Out there you're a policeman," said the storekeep. "In here, you're a customer, and the price is 1 kuai a page."

There was a bit more of this, until the shopkeeper's wife decided it had gone on long enough. "Those days are gone," she said with barely disguised contempt. "Ask any of the stores around here and they'll say the same. You heard my husband. It's 1 kuai a page. Now how many copies do you want?"

"Twenty copies," said the policeman. He waited until my copying was done, then handed over his document and his money.

When I came to China in 2002, there was a small row of shops just inside the southwest gate of the BLCU campus. Right next door to that line of shops on the road outside the grounds was -- if you'll forgive my Australianism -- a copshop. Imagine the exact opposite outcome to the story above, and you'll have an accurate picture of the interactions between those shopkeepers and their local law enforcement representatives. Interactions I witnessed several times. Also just outside the gate was a well known black-market money changer, for which the local law acted as security.

There's a thousand explanations for the different outcome, and believe me I've thought of all of them.

Maybe I don't get out enough, haven't seen enough, don't know China well enough. But there's something about unapologetic insolence towards a policeman that to this Old China Hand feels like a beginning.

Shannon Roy rigorously followed the mandated Old-China-Hand First Five Year Plan: Mandarin at BLCU; teaching English to over-privileged hunzi children; working for a Chinese government department; going home for a year; and coming back carrying a business plan. He is now in his Second Five Year Plan, which involves the resolute development of an open-source software company in Beijing.