Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Production Update

I received several concerned emails regarding my safety as it relates to the the shady film production company, so I feel it is necessary to provide an update. Sadly, it is rather anti-climactic. I know that people didn't really want me and Donny to lose vital organs and awaken in ice baths, but it would have made a much more interesting story.

Instead, the conclusion is that the people were, in fact, quite shady, but not in any kind of dangerous way. They never called us back. My guess is that they'll use the photos of us in costumes for advertisement without our permission, and we will have no recourse about it if we find out. That's fine. We were swindled, I suppose, but I don't really feel like I was. I got an entertaining experience out of the whole thing, and I don't really care what they do with a confused looking photo of me. It's just a photo. Any one of the million people on the streets around my school can see me any day.

I'm just glad that we didn't have to enter the contract negotiation stage. I was armed with vocabulary and grammar about contracts that I learned the day prior to the appointment we were supposed to have, but I wasn't planning on signing anything. Any contract that we could have signed would have only hurt us in the end.

Though no information was given to the scholarship students on this issue, I know that we are not supposed to be working. First of all, we don't have work permits. However, second of all, there's a white paper (official document) written regarding the scholarship I hold that explicitly states that scholarship students are not to be working, permit-holding or not. I looked it up before I left for China. So, in the case that we would have negotiated payment, written it into the contract, signed it, and then not received proper compensation after the job, we would have actually had nothing we could do. We couldn't take the contract to the police or a lawyer, because they would see that we were working without permits. Also, in the event that we had the work permit realization during the work, and stopped attending, we would have broken a legally binding contract. Then we would have been in even more trouble, because we entered a work agreement without a permit, and then broke a legal agreement. The effects of all those years that I wanted to be a lawyer never left my head.

I was not about to sign that contract. Honestly, I was not about to take any work offered to me here. If you'll recall, I never actually agreed to anything in this situation. That man just spoke to me in an assumptive tone about the work. I don't want the hassle and potential trouble of working here. Furthermore, I just don't like the way people that I've encountered from that industry think they should do business with foreigners. So my new standard operating procedure for getting approached by people for modeling, advertisement, etc. is no longer going to be passive refusal. It's going to be a strong, resounding, "No," followed by a, "Go away," if necessary.

1 Comments:

At 1:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

当时好多学生,包括我,是给驻华外籍记者工作的。我也没有管工作证没有。

 

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