Police Paddywagon Rides
The morning classes fine this morning. I made two kids stand up in front of the class in horse stance while they had their fists out with chalk placed on their wrists. If they break the chalk, they will get in more trouble. One did break the chalk...i didnt expect it...so, I just made him sit there longer. During lunch time I headed to the BOND office to meet with Katherine. As I walk thru the gate, Lynn comes running up and shouting my name. Apparently Katherine switched and Lynn was the one gonna go to the police station with me to make a statement and fill out some forms about the stolen bike. Lynn has more experience with this. The first week Robert was here, he had his bag stolen at the supermarket and they had to go. So we go to the Police Station.
We get there and walk up the back stairs into the office areas. We go to the desk and chat with a couple people. Then a guy comes out later with some forms and we start filling them out with him. Lynn was my interpretter. All the while we were filling out forms another police officer was going thru photos of crime scenes on the computer not more than 5 feet away from me, with the monitor in our direction. I had plain view of all the real crime scene photos. Blood and everything. Lynn would gag everytime a foto with blood would come up. Why she didn't tell them to change the direction of the monitor beats me. I was strangely interested. Its weird that these are fotos from stuff in Xiaolan, yet I have never seen this stuff. Which is good I guess. If you cannot deal with graphic descriptions, best not to read on...skip a couple paragraphs.
One set of fotos that he was looking at dealt with an altercation on the road or sidewalk: fotos with pool, and I mean a pool of blood on the cement sidewalk, a man laying limp on his side - almost in the fetal position but spread out - on the sidewalk or road or whatever, the sides of a man and a woman's face bloodied and with a 1 or 2 cuts with a few first aid bandages covering the serious wounds, and a what looked like a very large pocket knife..I dont know the exact size, but it was a fold out knife of some kind. Another set dealt with another incident that took place in a restaurant: there were fotos of a private room, the chairs were in disarray, food was messed all over the table, glasses were shattered on the floor, there was blood all over the room, on the floor, the table, chairs, shattered glasses, and on the external air conditioning unit (the AC units in the country are big things like the size of a tall thin refridgerator) - it looked like a drunken karaoke party gone awry horribly horribly awry. However the fotos that really made me cringe and tell Lynn not to look up was a set that took place at an apartment complex. Someone had brutally carved up a baby while he was sleeping. The blood looked fresh as well. The baby was in the fotos, his eyes half open, and blood covered him as well as the white bed sheet covers. It was terrible and the Police Officer kept zooming in on the fotos. Ugh, I hope they have the murderer in custody. I can come to my own obvious conclusions about what happened at some of the scenes.
At one point when he first started looking at fotos, i just saw a bit of blood and some guys face bloodied up. I asked Lynn to ask what happened, she did, and there was no response. After the dead silence is when the first foto of the man lying on his side popped up. Gotcha. So, we continued on with the forms.
They sure wanted alot of information on there. More so then necessary since they will never find the bike or look for it. They guy looking at crime scene fotos said I would be super lucky if they ever found it. Duh. Its china...do you actually think you could find one stolen bike in this place? Its like a needle in a haystack. I then asked Lynn if they were packing any weapons. Just curious if the office staff was packing. They said no and that they didn't need any. "It's not like the US where guns are easy to get." I was like, you can't tell me there is no illegal gun trade in China. If a criminal wants a guy, he will find one. So I was all like, "What if a terminator or some psycho walks in and starts shooting the place up, like in all those movies. They would be so out of luck and couldn't stand a chance." They said that there was another guy in another room who was packing heat. So, I kept on harping on it to Lynn, and she could do nothing but laugh. I also was asking her to ask bizarre questions, like if the chinese police would allow a foreigner to join the force to help deal with the english issues in large cities. Lynn said they wouldn't do it because there was no way that a foreigner could understand their laws. "Ok, there you go with the cultural arrogance again. You don't believe I could tell a crime from a non-crime? I mean, if a dude steals your bag, thats pretty much illegal in any country...except Mexico." "Really? Thats legal in Mexico?".....
The last part of form filling out dealt with Lynn translating all of the questions that he just asked her and she asked me, but I needed to write something down to say that she explained everything to me and that it was the truth. I was all like, "Dude, its the truth from my point of view. The gym may have a different view as well as the criminal." It took me about 5 minutes to understand what she meant. I thought she was saying to write down everything she was reading. Confusion. But I got it done. And then I had to sign my name about 8x and fingerprint every signature and every scratchmark i made while I was trying to understand what Lynn was babbling about.
As we were about to leave I noticed Lynn and the cop filling out the form were flirting a bit. So i started to tell her to ask him out and she started blushing. I was like, "ask him on a date? are you single, go for it, you are hot, he is attractive, do it!" She would then elbow me. On the way down the stairs the police stopped us. They wanted to give me a ride home. What? Lynn said they wanted to give me a ride home. Apparently they don't do this for everyone that comes in with a stolen bike report. Lynn said I was special. I was just like...no they are just being nice and trying to gain face in front of a foreigner. She was like, "exactly. If it were just me, they wouldn't care." I told them only if Lynn comes because I was afraid the cops would take me to the jail cells and give me a body cavity search. So she came along.
They took us to the police van, which I was hoping was gonna be a Paddy wagon, but it was just a van like the BOND van. They ran the sirens off a couple times and I got all giddy. The driver along with the officer looking at crime scene fotos were the only police with us. I asked them about what martial arts they learned. Lynn interpretted. They said that most of the police officers had served 2-4 years in the Chinese Army before becoming Police officers. He said they trained for 4 years in Xanda (Muay Thai Kickboxing) and I asked where they do it now. The guy said Yongning in the xanda school affliated with my teacher, Guo Sifu. BADASS! I got home and I had an hour before I had to be back at class.
Class this afternoon went really well. I was super tired after classes were finally fhinished. Goodnite