And Then He Flashed Me His Badge

I found out this morning that it does not work pretending that you do not speak or understand Chinese when you are confronted by a Chinese police officer, they are going to get what they want out of you either the easy way or the hard way.

I was running late for school when I came out of my apartment building and realized that I had left my bike at a friends house after Thanksgiving dinner. The quickest option was then going to be to take a taxi to the subway. As is usually the case at 8:00 am, a taxi was difficult to find. After waiting a couple minutes and realizing I could be waiting for many minutes a hei che pulled up to me and asked me where I was headed. Hei Che is the Chinese term for an unlicensed taxi. I told him where I was going, we agreed on a price, and we were off.

When I got to the subway station I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a man running up to me with a hurried look on his face. He very quickly flashed me a black badge, grabbed my arm, and said a bunch of words - the only one I understood was jingcha, which means police man. He asked me how I got there, of course he already knew the answer to this. I pretended not to understand him hoping that he would get frustrated with the stupid foreigner and let me go about my way. He asked for my passport, which of course I did not have on me. I showed him my student ID card and he started to full out what looked to be some sort of citation. I very quickly realized that if I didn't start speaking Chinese to these guys they would wait all day until they could find someone who could translate. The bigger of the two policemen asked me how much I paid the driver. As an admission of guilt I told him the truth, 20 kuai. What happened next was the last thing I expected. As the littler guy was filling out the paper work the larger man, who was also obviously the man in charge, returned with my 20 kuai, which he returned to me.

They asked for my phone number, and at this point I decided it was not a good idea to lie to these guys. I signed my name on the form and got on the subway. Hopefully that is the end of that encounter. I was late for school.