Nice to have some guanxi...or maybe not

Today my SO was riding her scooter on her way to work. At a T-intersection she wanted to turn left and stopped to wait for green light. When the signal changed she crossed the road for green light but two police officers, standing at the intersection, pulled her over and told her that she’d crossed it by running through the red light.

When my SO asked how else she should do it, the officers came up with a story about continuing to the next intersection and making a u-turn there. Then she could come back and turn right this time (thus not crossing the road in front of the officers). At first she refused to pay, but running late for work she agreed on paying a reduced fine (IMHO she didn’t do anything wrong). She got of with paying NT$ 600 instead of the original fine of NT$ 1800. :noway:

At her adult students home, her student told her that she had very good connections within the police department as she did a lot of business with many officers and was a personal friend of the director of police in our city. Therefore, my SO’s student made a call and the fine was deleted from the system. The student told my SO that she had done that numerous times before when she got fined herself. Nobody wants to harm a fruitful business relationship. :idunno:

And this is a pretty typical story for the area where I live.

Reason #12 why personal checks are not used on Taiwan - Makes it too easy to track ‘Official Corruption.’

That’s a beautiful story, henrik…

Good story, but…

For NTD 600 your SO is now in guanxi “debt” to her student. I call that selling herself too cheap.

[quote=“X3M”]Good story, but…
For NTD 600 your SO is now in guanxi “debt” to her student. I call that selling herself too cheap.[/quote]“Some day, and this day may never come, I might ask you to do a favor for me…”