Getting closer

(a continuation of the last two stories)

"Ni hao, shi fu! Qing, da biao, Wo yao qu pai chu suo."

I hoped the taxi driver would understand that I wanted to go to the police station. He did. I just didn't understand that he wanted to know which one. That is, when he mentioned that we were on Tian Sheng Lu, which I in fact knew, I didn't realize he was actually asking me if I wanted to go to the Tian Sheng Lu Station. Apparently Beibei has several police stations. Or, in hindsight, I think that's what he was asking me.

I might have been Moses parting the Red Sea when I walked into the all too familiar police station, with both uniformed folks and civilians stepping to one side or the other of me, watching me closely as I approached the receptionist. She patiently listened when I explained that on May 25th I had lost my passport, I had already come to the police station, and I already had a report. But there was a mistake in the report, and I needed a new one. That much I said, and, even if she didn't understand my Chinese, she said, "I know, I know, I know," and told me to sit down.

A tall young woman stopped in mid-conversation with another receptionist and asked in English if she could help. Her boyfriend, whom I later knew as Fang Qi, rose from his seat and came over to me, gently asking questions, also offering to help.

The big officer who had been smitten by my beautiful Chinese tutor when we last went to the station laughed "Come in!" a dozen times, laughing more each time he said it. He cheerfully led me--and my new friend Fang Qi--through the room with a bicycle or two to the back room where my sister and her friend had so patiently waited for hours on my last visit.  The thin young officer with glasses smoked at the adjacent desk, and other uniformed people, all friendly enough, came in and out of the room. I explained the problem in English this time, which Fang Qi translated. Each time the officer repeated the question, Fang Qi would repeat the answer, and the officer would explode in loud but friendly English: "I know, I know, I know!" And then proceed to ask more questions we'd already gone over.

Other people who'd lost cell phones and such occasionally swept in and out of the room, all talking excitedly.  A woman in uniform came in to wish me well for Dragon Festival--did I have any zongzi? The girlfriend, a grad student in psychology who had just lost her cell phone, occasionally poked her head in. I tried to get Fang Qi to go with her, but he insisted she wasn't done and didn't need him. Meanwhile, Fang Qi told me about the three phones he'd lost and all about his hometown, which was not Beibei. He allowed that he felt just like me, a foreigner. He asked me lots of questions and offered observations of his own about the region while my policeman worked away on the correction process (we needed one word changed, but changing that word required several other policemen to go check out more information).

At last, the new report was almost ready--but then the computers froze. Fang Qi kept talking and eventually the computers worked again. At last, I had a new report, duly marked with red thumb prints. Most of the police force came out to wave me off as I turned down Tian Sheng Lu for the 45 minute walk home.

Back in my apartment, I heard my cell phone rumble in my backpack. Fang Qi was texting to see if I made it home okay and to wish me well for Dragon Festival.

Now that I have the new police report, I can go back to the waiban tomorrow and meet someone who will accompany me to the Public Security Bureau in another city to get the form needed for the US Consulate. It was the Public Security Bureau officer, after all, who insisted I go back to the police station to get a new report when we last went to the Public Security Bureau.

It goes on and on. . . but we're getting closer.

Meanwhile, Lingfang and Ling and Xiaodan and others, Mr. Wang, have periodically checked up on me, offering help about some of the related issues--for getting these forms to the U. S. Consulate are just a few of the many to go.

I just got a text message from Fang Qi. His girlfriend found her cell phone.