I spend a lot of my time here avoiding police. Not because I'm actually doing anything illegal (most of the time), but because the Chinese po kind of scare me.
So I wasn't all that keen on the idea when my friend, panicking after her digital camera was stolen, insisted on calling the police.
But what was I going to say? "No, you shouldn't try to find your 3,000-yuan camera because I have an irrational distrust of people in uniform"? So I waited with her at a wet and chilly Chengdu bus stop as we waited for the promised officers to show.
And waited, and waited.
After about half an hour, I asked if realistically the police were going to come. As someone who has phoned 9-1-1 in a panic to report a just-nabbed bicycle, only to be instructed to phone the non-emergency line and fill out some forms, I know how justifiably unwilling Canadian police are to dash, sirens blazing, to the scene of every petty streetside theft. But she was seriously distressed, and convinced the police would come and be on the thief's trail in no time.
Sure enough, they arrived--the two most laid-back cops I have ever encountered. Shoulder badges flashing, they listened to my friend's story, asked her a few questions, and told her there was nothing they could do and she should come to the station to fill out some forms.
She was not impressed.
I, on the other hand, was callously delighted to get a free ride in a Chinese police cruiser, a free tour of the surprisingly small police station and the chance to gaze in almost total incomprehension at detailed incident reports--so liberally stamped with red-ink thumbprints they were almost illegible.
Naturally, our officer duo found me thoroughly amusing, especially when I tried to answer questions in butchered Mandarin. Oh, joy.
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