As Grip of Censors Endures in China, A Satirical Poem Leads to Jail Time

So to while away the afternoon, Qin took his friend's comments and turned them into a satirical poem, full of puns and comical allusions. "The horse has run far away," it began, making a pun on Ma's departure as secretary and the fact that his family name can mean "horse." Zhou Wei, the county administrator, was singled out for his name's similarity to the Chinese word for Viagra. Lan Qinghua, the new secretary, also got roasted with a pun that turned his name into "incompetent and gutless."

"Look at Pengshui County today," the poem went on. "It's full of foul air and conflicts between officials and the public cannot be halted."

Qin's friends acknowledged that the verse was not great literature. The young bureaucrat had always displayed literary ambitions that may have been greater than his talent, they joked.

Qin himself described the composition as more of a lark than serious poetry. "It only took 10 minutes," he said. "I didn't think it would be such a big deal."

But then Qin did something that would turn it into a big deal. He transmitted the poem to the cellphones of a half-dozen friends. They in turn transmitted it to their friends, in a widening circle. Eventually it ended up in the cellphone of Zhang Fu'An, chairman of Pengshui County's local People's Congress. Outraged, he took it to the county administrator, who was equally upset and asked the Public Security Bureau to identify the author.

The security sleuths interrogated Qin's friends and backtracked cellphone messages for two weeks, eventually tracing the offensive poem to Qin. At about 5 p.m. Aug. 31, two policemen stepped into Qin's office on the sixth floor of the county Education Committee building and confronted the poet.

Qin, his black hair carefully combed down and his wire-rim glasses in place as always, at first denied he was the author, according to Li Xingchen, a Chongqing journalist who investigated the case. The two police officers left to check with their superiors, Li said, but returned within 10 minutes.

"We know it's you," they said, and Qin confessed.

'Modern-Day Word Crime'

The policemen hauled Qin to the station to be interrogated. By the next day, he was detained on suspicion of criminal libel, which carries a penalty of up to three years in prison. His wife, Chen Qiong, was advised to get him an attorney. The office of the procurator filed formal charges Sept. 11, and Qin's office, cellphone and computer were searched for incriminating evidence.

The case, meanwhile, had struck a journalistic nerve with Li. He wrote an article for a blog denouncing Qin's treatment as "a modern-day word crime," harking back to a much-ridiculed Qing dynasty practice of jailing writers who tripped over the intricate Mandarin language of the time.

The historical reference caught people's fancy across the country. Internet comment flourished. A Hong Kong newspaper, not subject to the mainland's censorship rules, published the first article. Then mainland newspapers took up the dare; several carried their own accounts. Eventually, even a Web site run by the official People's Daily allowed someone to post an article.

"The thing got bigger and bigger," recalled Li, a writer for a Chongqing real estate magazine who has resolved for 2007 to write a book on his ideas for improving China.