How Beijing Interrogates a Foreigner

choi

英媒：中国当局拘押德国媒体中国雇员. BBC Chinese, Jan 16, 2015
www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/pres ... 5_press_ft_guardian
("英国《金融时报》报道[:] 德国《时代周刊》发表了一篇6,500字的报道，描述该中国雇员张淼 [ZHANG Miao] 继续遭关押的情况。张淼曾是《时代周刊》驻北京记者安吉拉（Angela Kockritz）的助理")

(2) The BBC report ultimately is based on

Angela Köckritz, They Have Miao; How my assistant got into trouble with Beijing’s security apparatus and I got to know the Chinese authorities. The Zeit, Jan 14, 2015 (there are German and Chinese versions also).
www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-p ... g-miao-imprisonment

Quote:

“This is a state ruled by arbitrariness. The agonizing uncertainty I’m feeling is intentional.

“They’ve been eavesdropping on me for four year – on my phone, in my apartment. They read my emails and monitor what I post on social networks. They sometimes let me know that they’ve searched through my home: The box of business cards I keep on my desk will have somehow ended up outside on the mailbox. A door I’d locked is now open. The time setting on my computer has been changed from Beijing to Seoul. These things happen to other correspondents, too. It’s an ugly thought, but I usually didn’t let it bother me all that much. How else was I going to be able to live here? But now that I know they aren’t just gathering information, but are also going to use it, things are starting to look different.

Note:
(a) Chinese “government officials have told us that China is a country based on the rule of law, or what’s known in specialist circles as a Rechtsstaat.”

(b) German English dictionary
* Zeit (noun feminine): “time”
* Rechtsstaat (noun masculine): "constitutional state; state governed by the rule of law"
* Recht
  (noun neuter): "right; law"
  (adjective): "right, just, lawful"

(c) "She [ZHANG Miao] lived in Germany for a long time. She had a German residence permit. In Hamburg, she was my Chinese teacher. We became friends. When she went back to Beijing two years ago, she started working in the office of DIE ZEIT."
(i) German articles
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_articles
(section 1.2 Definite article)

Pertinent here is “die” precedes some feminine or plural nouns. That is what I can tell.
(ii) Die Zeit
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Zeit
(was printed in Hamburg [has remained there] in 1946)

(d) Mr “Zhang works for the Exit & Entry Administration of the Ministry of Public Security 公安部 出入境管理局, which issues visas to foreigners.”
(e) "Miao’s lawyer, Zhou Shifeng 周 世锋"
(f) "He [an investigator who identified himself as Li] follows several threads of conversation at the same time. His voice has different registers, different pitches. He tries to lure me out of my emotional shell."

register (n): "the range of a human voice or a musical instrument"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/register
(g) " The questioning has lasted four and a half hours. Exhausted, I step out of the room and into the hallway, where all the policemen are standing. They laugh. They joke. All of a sudden, they are incredibly nice. Mr Li says he would like to invite me out for a private meal some time."

The "policemen" had been the interrogators in the windowless room.
(h) "To the right of him sits a man in a Nappa leather jacket who doesn’t introduce himself."

Nappa leather
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nappa_leather