Sobbing Intel techie recounts China brothel ordeal

Stranded in oriental hell-hole

A tearful Intel engineer has recounted how a simple trip to China to check in on a few of the chip monolith's business partners ended in a unscheduled stop in the remote city of Taiyuan during which he suffered pretty well every ignominy the locals could heap on the hapless foreign devil.

The ordeal began when, as AP reports, Eugene Nelson of Intel's facility in DuPont, WA, realised his scheduled flight from Hong Kong to Taiwan had taken much longer than it should. A quick check of the flight path on the video screen revealed the horrifying truth: he wasn't about to hit the tarmac in Taipei, but rather the aforementioned "industrial centre deep within China".

Nelson later confessed: "Oh my God, it felt like someone poured a bucket of hot water on me. I realised I was literally 200 miles south of the Mongolian border. That's when dread just came over me. I don't know how else to explain it."

Nelson's dread was not unfounded. He spent his first night in Taiyuan trying to find a bed - a process not aided by his lack of Chinese. He quickly found himself in what turned out to be a local knocking shop, and was obliged to "damn near fight my way out".

Returning to the airport, officials declined his request to get his head down inside, but mercifully, he hooked up with a local girl who spoke some English and "arranged for friends to loan the obviously distressed American money and give him a safe ride to a hotel". Nelson admitted: "She probably saved my fricking life."

Nelson now faced several days on the mean streets of Taiyuan - during which he was injured avoiding a homicidal local car driver and spat upon by welcoming locals - trying to find a bank which would accept the Amex wire transfer, arranged by his Stateside missus, and on which his escape from the oriental hell-hole depended.

After "nearly endless hours" of searching, Nelson located a bank which would let him collect the cash - but not before he could "get his account information translated into Mandarin so that he could access the money". This process mercifully took just a finite number of hours, after which Nelson could run screaming onto a flight to liberty.

After travelling through Beijing to Vancouver, British Columbia, and eventually to Sea-Tac, Nelson was reunited with his wife Michelle Chewerda, and his three kids. It was, according to AP, an emotional homecoming.

And regarding those citizens of Taiyuan who had not attempted to run him over, spit on him or attempt to extract cash in return for sexual favours, Nelson said: "Honestly, everyone who helped me, I'll never forget them." ®

Bootnote

For the record, Nelson said goodbye to his new-found Chinese chums at Taiyuan airport before boarding his outbound flight - and repaid all the cash they'd lent him. Good show.