Ben Blanchard makes a joke that few are going to get: The True Story of Ah Shu: Interview with a Snakehead

Want to go to England to seek your fortune? No passport? No visa? No problem. For 60,000 yuan ($7,250), snakehead Ah Shu can help...

Ah Shu, from his shop in a seaside town near the provincial capital Fuzhou, says the days of sneaking people into foreign countries in tightly packed cargo containers or the backs of trucks are gone.

"We don't dare do it that way any more," he said. "You get executed for doing it like that now if you're caught."

People smuggling has become a sophisticated business, involving real passports and in many cases real visas, he said.

Ah Shu offers to help with the bribes to get a Chinese passport -- it takes just a few thousand yuan to grease the palms of the right officials.

Then he has middlemen in the local government and in England issue false letters of invitation from schools or businesses, which he says are accepted by embassies.

The preferred route is through one of the growing list of countries which have opened to Chinese tourism in recent years.