Police porn examiner in Jiangsu stressed to finish 40k porn DVDs in one month
Some mid-week fun. A viral story today on both Renren, China’s Facebook clone, and Weibo, China’s leading microblogging service, has to do with a job that may be the envy of many Chinese young guys – police porn examiner. They are technically police, but their sole job, as the original news article indicates, is to screen porn materials and distinguish pornography from non-pornography content.
The main story of the news article is about how local police at Peixian, Jiangsu province, has successfully smashed the biggest porn DVD wholesale retailer in Jiangsu province and its surrounding areas – 19 stores were closed, 25 people arrested and more than 40,000 porn DVDs confiscated.
The news itself has nothing to be surprised about because “anti-yellow campaigns” are pretty common in China. Yellow, in this case, means “pornographic.” The targets of anti-yellow campaigns are usually porn materials and commercial sex, which are deemed to be morally decadent and socially undesirable.
What caught Chinese netizens’ attention is the last paragraph of the article:
“According to local police at Peixian. Over 40k porn DVDs were confiscated. Four porn examiners at Peixian police department spent more than a month to finish screening all of them.”
Result of the investigation? “Despite a few unreadable ones due to abrasion, most are determined to be porn DVDs.”
And don’t think porn examiners are an easy job. According to Sichuan Mobile Newspaperwho verified the existence of porn examiners with local police at Chengdu, Chengdu police department also has police officers who are responsible for screening porn materials. To be a porn examiner, one has to be an “outstanding, well-behaved and highly politically-sensitive” police officer who “won’t have any problems after watching porn materials.”
Many netizens expressed surprise at the existence of such a job, but more admitted that porn examiner can be a demanding job and wondered whether there is a part-time option.