Names
Once a prisoner enters the prison, his or her original name is no longer used. Instead, the prisoners are referred by number. The number consists of two parts, with the first two digits indicating the year the prisoner was sent to Qincheng prison, while the remaining digits are the sequential number. For example, prisoner 6299 means that the prisoner was sent to the prison in 1962, while he or she was the 99th prisoner sent to Qincheng Prison that year.
Prison employees are also prohibited from referring to each other by name, instead, they are called according to their job title, such as manager, warden, and director. However, their last names are sometimes allowed to be added before their job title when they are addressed.
Read more about this topic: Qincheng Prison
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words.... The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“At present our only true names are nicknames.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)