From 'Selected Novels', Xiaoshuo Jingxuan. This is a short, amusing little story. I hope.
If he isn't a conman who is?
The head of the village police station, Fat Huang, was having his noon nap when he got the phone call. It interrupted his dreams, so he was naturally in a bad mood when he answered. "Which bastard, what bastard business, can't a man even have a noon nap?"
"A conman? From where?" As soon as he heard a conman had been caught, Fat Huang got his energy back. Until then he hadn't caught a conman. He could fine this one ten or twenty thousand, and the next quarters accounts wouldn't look so bad. He changed his tone "Watch him closely, I'll bring some people right over"
Fat Huang told his deputy, took his handgun, handcuffs and his electric baton, and rode his motorbike to Seven Fork Village.
Perhaps because of Fat Huang's instructions, the villages had tied the conman up.
Fat Huang came in the door and pointed at the bound middle-aged man with his baton. "What's your name? Where are you from? What crimes have you done? Speak honestly!"
The middle-aged man saw the police had arrived and spoke quickly. "My names Zhao Yanjing, I'm local, I'm the head of a department in the city. Tell them to untie me, please. Doing this is illegal."
Fat Huang was the head of a first-class police station, and had been for a good many years. He'd seen plenty of things, but he'd never seen anyone talk like that. Imagine the conman seeing him and still thinking he could cheat his way out of this. Ridiculous. He poked his baton under the conman's jaw to raise his head and said 'Look, look at this face. Does he look like a department head? Well if you're a department head, who am I, Fat Huang? A mayor?" The villagers laughed out loud.
The middle-aged man saw Fat Huang making fun of him and got angry. "Chief Huang, you're still a government official, speak and act responsibly. All you have to do is make a phone call, ask a question and you'll know."
"Why don't you ask me to phone Zhongnanhai 
, and ask Jiang Zemin if he knows the department head Zhao Whatever? How about that!?" The villagers laughed again.
The middle-aged man wanted to speak again, but Fat Huang cut him short and spoke to the village secretary who'd phoned him. "Tell me, what cons has he tried?" he said, and asked his deputy to take notes.
The secretary recounted the events from start to finish, with pride.
"Yesterday dinner time, a strange middle-aged man turned up in the village, calling himself Zhao Yanjing, son of the village's Zhao Dada. Zhao Dada did have a son, living with a relative in the city. he hadn't been seen since he was small, so nobody in the village would recognise him. That wasn't a problem though, Zhao Dada would recognise him. However, Zhao Dada and his wife had gone to visit their daughter, and they would be back for a couple of weeks.
"Last night he needed somewhere to stay, I was a little unwilling, but I let him stay anyway. He started to chat with me. I asked him what he did in the city, and he said he was a departmental head. As soon as he said that I realised he was probably a conman. The city's really rich, the council's got plenty of money, hundreds and hundreds of thousands. You won't find a departmental head like this there, look at him! Hasn't been back for decades, then he comes back to his old village to visit, he's not even driving a car, not even an Audi or at least a Santana. What kind of departmental head comes on the bus? Never mind that, you'd still bring a few dozen red envelopes to hand out. As for him, two empy hands, what way is that
to come and meet your relatives? Says he's been a departmental head for years, the devil'd believe him, but I won't! You look at him, does he have a beer belly? No. Gold rings? No. He didn't even go out to look for prostitutes at night, he just talked to me all night. I got more and more wary, you just don't get departmental heads like that, when they go away they take mistresses with them, or go and find massage parlours. You can beat me to death, I still won't believe him.
"When I'd seen through him, I tried to figure out what his aim was. I watched him closely, I knew I'd catch him out sometime. This morning, he went for a wander around the village, around the fields. When he came back he told me, if the village is going to get rich, we'd need to fix the roads. He suggested investing in the village, and he'd take care of the work, even promised it wouldn't cost us a penny. Said it was his way of thanking the village.
"I'm not three years old, to be conned by him. I phoned the police right away."
After Fat Huang had heard this, he smiled. "So that's it. Pretending to be a departmental head, coming to Seven Forks to cheat us. You underestimated us, didn't you!"
Just then, the conman's mobile phone rang. Fat Huang answered it and heard someone say 'Head Zhao, where are you? The mayor's looking for you, he needs to talk to you urgently. Tell me where you are, we'll send a car."
Fat Huang looked at the mobile and laughed. "Still Departmental Head is it? Less of the rubbish, please. Your fake departmental head's already been caught, and we'll get you too."
"Who are you, are you joking?"
"Joking? I'm the head of Seven Forks Police Station, Fat Huang, and I never pretend to be anyone else."
Fifteen minutes later, Fat Huang got a call from the PSB in the city, asking him to release Departmental Head Zhao Yanjing immediately, and drive him back to the city. As he hung up, he said "You idiots, release the departmental head immediately, and apologise."
He put down the phone and looked at this Zhao Yanjing. He didn't look a bit like a departmental head.