{"id":58185,"date":"2025-09-02T01:00:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T05:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=58185"},"modified":"2025-09-01T08:30:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T12:30:54","slug":"qotd-fixers-and-minders-for-foreign-visitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/09\/02\/qotd-fixers-and-minders-for-foreign-visitors\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Fixers&#8221; and &#8220;minders&#8221; for foreign visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Old hands in some foreign places will remember that there are <em>fixers<\/em> and <em>minders<\/em>. <em>Fixers<\/em> are hired by e.g. corporations and news organizations and by embassies to help executives, reporters and senior officials (I was never senior enough ~ I think it was limited to Assistant Deputy Ministers, sometimes directors-general if they were heads of delegation) in strange places. <em>Fixers<\/em> were interpreters, guides and general helpers, sometimes even bodyguards. <em>Minders<\/em> did everything <em>fixers<\/em> did, usually (in my limited experience) better, but they were <strong>official<\/strong>; mine was assigned by the Chinese Ministry of Defence and I had no choice about her ~ thankfully she was pleasant and efficient. My <em>minder<\/em> had a seemingly magical ID card; she was able to move us to the front of almost every line and upgrade air and rail tickets (all at no charge), something that <em>fixers<\/em> could not do. Of course, she had other duties which included ensuring that I did NOT see or hear what I was not supposed to see or hear. It was just part of dealing with official China.<\/p>\n<p>Ted Campbell, <a href=\"https:\/\/coloneltedcampbell.blog\/2020\/06\/26\/a-new-front-in-cold-war-2-0\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;A new front in Cold War 2.0&#8221;, <em>Ted Campbell&#8217;s Point of View<\/em><\/a>, 2020-06-26.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Old hands in some foreign places will remember that there are fixers and minders. Fixers are hired by e.g. corporations and news organizations and by embassies to help executives, reporters and senior officials (I was never senior enough ~ I think it was limited to Assistant Deputy Ministers, sometimes directors-general if they were heads of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,22,84,41],"tags":[1381,432,388],"class_list":["post-58185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-china","category-government","category-quotations","tag-coldwar2","tag-diplomacy","tag-secrecy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-f8t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58185"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97629,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58185\/revisions\/97629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}