KEY POINTS:
Go out the back door, the guards at the State Bureau of Letters and Visits said. They didn't use force but their language was threatening and the atmosphere tense.
The recipient of this advice, John (not his real name), a Chinese originally from Shanghai and now resident in Vancouver, politely declined. He wanted to use the front door and gently insisted, drawing his Canadian passport as an extra incentive. They let him pass, using the front door, to freedom.
What lay outside the back door? John didn't know but he had his grave suspicions. "Probably, waiting for me, was a bus," he said. "It would take me back to Shandong province [his home in China]. That's all they wanted to know every time I call where are you from? Where are you from?"
Once the authorities have their answer, they channel the petitioners through the door where, as many stories have it, they are herded on to buses and taken home, without their complaints being heard in many cases.
What follows is misty. Much of the detail provided stems from human rights agencies who have an obvious agenda in China. But local anecdotes back them up. Petitioners are sometimes roughed up, beaten.
Taking on City Hall in China can be dangerous for your health, yes, but mostly it's frustrating and has as much to do with creaking bureaucracy and corruption as anything.
John's story is an interesting window on the strange systems of China, the injustices, corruption and bureaucratic nightmares which ensnare many Chinese.
John, 36, thinks he is lucky. He has only been petitioning the governments, local and national, for two years. He says many Chinese people have been petitioning for 10, 20 and 30 years without any resolution. Local sources back this up.
Before and during the Olympics, the Chinese authorities have actively discouraged petitioners laying their complaints. They don't want negative attention trained on such people during the Olympic showcase.
So petitioners, many from outlying provinces of China, who travel to Beijing are routinely herded up like sheep and shipped back where they came from. Some unconfirmed reports say persistent offenders are beaten when they get home.
At the State Bureau of Letters and Visits one of the main centres where petitioners go to lay their complaints I am trying to see if there are still people trying their luck or whether the flow of thousands has dried up to a trickle.
I and an interpreter walk confidently into the entrance, as if we own the place. But we are stopped by security guards. In a room next to the uniformed guards, behind a closed door, sits a group of men wearing shorts and Olympic T-shirts. They are undercover policemen. They skirt the environs of the bureau, listening, watching the visitors. They all look remarkably alike.
A long wait and negotiation ensues before we are politely shown the door, armed with instructions on where to go to fill in forms to seek permission to visit the bureau which will be declined, of course.
Outside, we bump into John. Like many petitioners, he is keen to meet journalists to see if they can help.
This is not the only spot in Beijing where such scenes occur. There are several places, including one nearby where you can find dozens of people with plastic bags full of documents relating to their case and desperately eager to find a reporter. But Chinese reporters are not running their stories - not in Olympic month.
Far away, in south Beijing, there is a flat, ugly building, surrounded by barbed wire which is fronted by a company purporting to be the Beijing Financial Assistance Management Centre, whatever that means.
Behind it is a holding pen of petitioners, many of whom are told to go in the building to lay their complaints and who are then held there before being put on buses home. I am warned against going there and accept the advice.
But even though there is a threat of physical danger, the usual lot of a petitioner is frustration, as John's story attests. He lives in Canada but saw an opportunity in China and began establishing a business involving a form of new energy lighting in Shandong province.
He received a very good rate for land, he said, from the local government authorities, signed a contract, and paid a 50,000 yuan deposit (about $10,000).
After he returned to Canada, the trouble started. A colleague called to say something strange had happened. Two prominent businessmen had built two workshops on the land John had earmarked for his business.
He learned they were powerful men, part of the local government itself, so there was no point seeking justice through that channel. "The law makers are often the law breakers in China," said John.
He talked to them by phone and later in person.
They told him they were powerful enemies and to back off.
When he persisted, they told him he could have the land back but only if he paid 700,000 yuan ($140,000) to clear it. He refused and was then sued by the local businessmen, even though he had a valid contract.
When he took his complaints to the police, they listened but did nothing a familiar complaint of petitioners. He persisted further and the two businessmen hired two thugs to menace him.
"They wanted to find out where I lived so they could threaten me and give them money," he said. "My wife was scared and I was scared so I sent my family home to Canada. Every night, I would stay in a different place to throw them off my trail."
Finally, tiring of the chase, John confronted the gangsters and offered them 20,000 yuan (about $4000) to leave him alone. They accepted.
But John was warned that was a common ploy to lull potential kidnap victims into a false sense of security. In the meantime, the court action taken by the businessmen saw John's Chinese house and business property seized by the local government.
He estimates he has $750,000 confiscated.
So he headed back to the police to tell his story again. Go to Beijing, they said. Tell your story to the government and seek justice.
So, for two years, he has been doing just that. In his visit to the Bureau of Letters and Visits, he got to see someone in authority because, he suspects, of the combination of being a native Chinese but also a foreign passport holder.
In the office, he said, there were only about 20 other petitioners. They were sat stoically at the back. They did not appear to be going anywhere. Their cases would not be heard during the Olympics. And maybe not at all.
John was told the Beijing government would write a letter about his case to the local government. He was hopeful that would force some action by the local government, once they realised Beijing was on the case.
"Someone has to do something. I know I am a Canadian national here but my business is here, my money is here and the infringement was here. The government must surely act and that will maybe force the local government to do something because they know that Beijing knows."
He has more faith than the Herald on Sunday. In researching this story, we heard several instances of such letters being written but simply being ignored by the local governments and forgotten by Beijing.
That is the normal lot of petitioners but things were at their nastiest immediately before the Games. The centre in southern Beijing was used when authorities evicted an estimated 4000 petitioners from a shanty town last year in the run-up to a key congress of the Communist Party in Beijing. They said the land was needed for roading.
At least 1500 more petitioners were taken into custody in a pre-Olympic purge this year, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.
A petitioner told a British newspaper she had been petitioning Beijing for eight years over a 25-year-old property dispute. She is in her mid-50s, began her latest visit in July and has so far avoided arrest.
Hundreds of other petitioners were not so fortunate, falling into the net cast by police to remove them from Beijing's streets before the Olympics.
It is yet another illustration that, behind the bright, happy and open facade of the Olympics, a very different China sleeps.
