khiemtran | In a Chinese Police Station...

In my first hour in Hangzhou, I was silly enough to leave my wallet in the back of a taxi, where, by the time I had reached the head of the queue to check in to my hotel room and noticed it was missing, it had already vanished, as these things tend to do. (The hotel called the taxi driver who claimed that two people had got in immediately after our group then had disembarked straightaway.)

So, anyway, the next morning I got to go down to the local police station to file a report. I was very lucky in that the hotel staff (from the Landison) were excellent. I had both an English-speaking assistant manager and a hotel security person accompany me to the station, which should have been enough to keep anyone out of further trouble.

Now, the police station... Imagine you were writing a sitcom called Hangzhou Fuzz - what would the station look like and who would be there? Well, for starters, once we walked through an imposing gate and into the building itself, there was a tiny office off by the door where we ended up waiting. Inside were two desks, with modern computers, two big wooden chairs of the style I think of as "Chinese armchairs" (i.e. low, flat and wide with large armrests) and no fewer than five police officers, all in different coloured uniforms. There was someone who might have been the duty sergeant (blue uniform, biggest chair, cigarette in one hand, tea flask in the other), who took the initial query from the hotel staff. He went through the usual expressions of mild disbelief whenever someone in authority is asked to do something unusual, but the hotel staff were polite and insistent and eventually convinced him that something was to be done.

In the meantime, outside the office, a shouting match had broken out between two groups of plaintiffs. A man in a construction hat was giving an ear splitting rant, arms by his side, syllables flying out like punches. Imagine Robert de Niro and Al Pacino working in the same Hangzhou station and being completely out-shouted. That's roughly what would have happened. The other police (lanky man in green uniform, young man with spiky haircut in jeans and sneakers) mostly ignored him, getting to their feet only when it seemed like he might be about to turn to violence. Next, an older, more portly policeman (dark blue uniform) stood up to berate each of the plaintiffs in turn, standing face to face with them as a crowd of onlookers gathered around. Then another man, apparently on the opposite side to the construction worker, had his turn, and gave his own rant (to my mind, spirited, but lacking in a certain on-the-edge quality that the construction worker had). From time to time, various bystanders and police intervened with their own shouting, but gradually it appeared that the construction worker was winning his case as his opponent ended up shouting more and more defensively and the other police seemed to lose interest again.

Meanwhile, the hotel staff had filled out the report on my behalf (using the desk of the young man in jeans and sneakers) and I signed a sheet of paper, all in Chinese, saying that I had sex with Angora rabbits and imported cocaine in my underpants to sell to orphans. The sergeant then took one glance at it, and said it had to be in black ink, so we all started again. Then it turned out no-one had a black pen. At last, someone did pull out a pen of the right colour (before we had to ask any of the plaintiffs outside), and we finished the paperwork, signed and left.

On the way out, the losing side of the argument had suddenly found a new lease of life and were pushing their case with a new vigour. Just another day for the Hangzhou Fuzz.