From the Peace Corps to the Police Car

My sister Mary and her friend were topping off a long art tour of China with a visit to me in the hinterland, unaware of the peculiarities of my hospitality. It was Saturday, and we had survived our bus ride from Chongqing to Beibei with nothing amiss besides the weather. We had just dropped our bags at my Beibei apartment and headed up Tian Sheng Road for a little lunch, for some of that tasty pepper, peanut, and chicken dish known as Gongbao Jiding. The rain wasn’t going to deter us—we’d just take the gondola up JinYun Mountain and watch different parts of the mountain peek in and out through the mist, with lush greens and rhododendrons and azaleas far below us. That’s what we were planning. We had just put our chopsticks down, had exchanged pleasantries with the restaurant owner, and had mosied back along the ivy-walled path to my apartment, just five minutes away, when we discovered that—oops! My purse was no longer in my backpack. It was simply gone. And in it, of course, were my driver’s license, a US bankcard, a Chinese card, and the big one—my passport.

Forget ordinary Chinese hospitality and the welcoming of dear family members. Mary and Mary Beth had instead my kind of hospitality, a most bizarre kind. We did indeed make it up JinYun, with Mary making it all the way to the pagoda at the tip top, but that was largely thanks to Ling and her family, JiaYue, and others. Nothing to do with me, who was still hobbling a bit with a bum knee. We did indeed make it to the small banquet dinner planned in their honor, but, again, that was made possible only because of Ling and her family’s triage when I found myself helpless—no money, no passport, no bank card, no brains—apparently. The next day we did make it to a nearby hot springs, but that was thanks only to Xiaodan, my beautiful tutor who turns heads wherever we go. 

We were on the bus, winding our way through the mountains from the hot springs back to Beibei when Xiaodan’s cell phone rang. It was the police, suggesting that we really ought to come by the police station (as opposed to just reporting my losses by phone.) Enter my contribution to the weekend’s events.

Having already spent the night on a very hard bed (my bed) and having eaten only a very simple breakfast (tea and hard boiled eggs) and having had at best a twenty-three second shower before the hot water turned cold, Mary and Mary Beth were in for some more of my hospitality. We all piled into something that took us to the police station in downtown Beibei where we were ushered into a back room.  There, Mary and Mary Beth were seated in two folding chairs from which they could survey the barred windows and steel desks as well as the very young police officer who was plying us with questions. My conversational Chinese is bad and my listening comprehension is worse if the speaker uses anything other than standard Mandarin, so Xiaodan functioned as my interpreter. I told you she is pretty, and, given that, perhaps the young policeman had very little incentive to speed things up. Five minutes went by, ten, fifteen.  An hour went by. The questions kept coming. So did a second visit via police car to the tiny restaurant, where we further traumatized the restaurant owner. Back to the police station and the folding chairs. Another hour. Two hours later, our report was finished with all the red ink thumb prints on every date and signature on its many pages. Half the police force came out to wave us off as we were driven via police car back to my apartment. Police car!

Lest you think the police station had the biggest thicket of forms and red thumb prints, though, you need to hear about the Bank of China. It turns out that you need your passport to access your account to get the money that you need to apply for a new passport. Right? It also turns out that you need your passport to take the train to the US Consulate in Chengdu in another province where you must go in person to request a new passport. You need your passport to put your head in another bed—you need your passport for just about anything. You need your passport for every step of replacing that very passport.

So, lest you think the Chinese police force and Bank of China win the prize for bureaucracy, I need to inform you that the Peace Corps, the Missouri Department of Revenue, and the US Consulate in China are no slugs. Don’t forget my various US banks. There are forms for reporting this, forms for applying for that, each of which have their own set of directions and most of which require downloading something, trotting up the road to the photocopy place, printing it, signing it, scanning it, and returning home to send it to someone or other—along with various dubious proofs of identity because the primary proofs of identity are precisely what is missing and need to be replaced. Welcome to the 4317 which requires this supporting evidence, and the DS-11 and the DS-24 which require that supporting evidence. There are secondary forms and websites and rules to be read and considered.

The thicket of bureaucracy in each little kingdom is terrifying—and Mary and Mary Beth got to witness me blindly making my way through these various thickets, dragging them along the way. (Of course, they went Mary-ily and offered sage, good-humored advice every step of the way.)

My army of Chinese friends, my US buddies, Peace Corps staff, and Chinese colleagues have all been fabulously helpful. But why did poor Mary and Mary Beth have to see any of this at all? What a way to treat them!? Instead of exploring the beautiful grounds of Southwest University (a designated botanical garden) or the Jialing riverside, Mary and Mary Beth sat on hard chairs in my barren living room and watched me make one more futile search of the apartment.

So, come visit me in Beibei whenever you wish—I don’t know if it will be a comedy or a tragedy, but I promise you a drama--and some bizarre hospitality!