December 9, 2019
The Police
The weirdest police experience in my life happened a year and a half ago when I got arrested because some chucklefuck decided to use my name and address as the destination for an internationally shipped package full of drugs. While tonight didn't involve the threat of handcuffs, it is easily the second weirdest police experience in my life.
Even going to karaoke with officials from the emergency call center (911 equivalent) wasn't as weird as tonight.
Even getting piss drunk with officials from the Exit and Entry Administration wasn't as weird tonight.
If I put on my thinking cap and scratch my head for a bit, I can probably come up with a good dozen times I've done [insert improbable thing here] with or for or because of the police and none of them remotely even began to be as weird as tonight.
Not. A. Single. One.
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In the hotel elevator with Catalina and Ivan on our way up to the rooms, I filled them in on the last bits of Chinese language conversation that had ended our awkward evening of being taken out to dinner by one of the two cops we met near the defensive tower in Paojie [炮界] about an hour and a half before sunset. As I was telling them, I thought, yeah, I'm probably misreading the situation. It wasn't actually a pickup line.
Over dinner (which he didn't eat, because he'd already eaten), during the nosy questions all Chinese people ask, I'd lied and said I was married. And he's married with an 8 year old kid. I fudged a bit on my education and made myself out to have the Master's I never actually went for as an easy way of explaining why I have a job that lets me take two month vacations and he doesn't. It couldn't actually be a pickup line. I had to be misreading the situation. It had to be that he actually had gone out without either charging his phone or bringing a charger cable.
Nope.
It was totally a pickup line.
Just in case I'd been too dense to realize, just in case I'd been thinking I was being helpful by letting him know that the front desk had some of the on-the-go powerbanks available, by the time I got to the room, there were some messages from him clarifying the situation.
-你先休息。我冲一点电就走了。谢谢交你这个朋友
-好。谢谢你请我们吃饭
-You have a good rest. I'm going to charge my phone a bit then leave. Thanks for making friends with me.
-Cool. Thanks for taking us out to eat
And when I ignored my phone for a while to do things like take an incredible high pressure hot shower or wash my laundry, there were more messages.
-交你这个朋友我好开心
-我现在准备走了。要不要我陪你？
-不需要我就走了。需要我就陪你一两个小时。
-Making friends with you has made me very happy.
-I'm about to go now. Want me to come stay with you?
-If you don't need, then I'll go. If you need, I can spend an hour or two with you.
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Absolutely nothing that we said or did either when the police van stopped by the side of the road to see what the big crowd was all about (it was about Ivan, Catalina, and me), when they talked to us (to me) and made sure that we were fine and well and knew what we were doing and where we were going, when I responded that we'd found a hotel, when I answered "up to you..." in return to his asking if we wanted him to come down to where we were and treat us to dinner, or at dinner could in any way, shape, or form, be construed by anyone as being the slightest bit welcoming or encouraging of 'Ay bby want sum fuk?" from anyone let alone a not particularly good looking, married rural police officer whose highest educational attainment isn't even a high school diploma.
At least the only form of contact he has for me is WeChat and he will easily be blockable or deletable. It's not like the 2008 Tour where people got my phone number. Some of the creepers and otherwise unable to understand boundary types (one of whom, coincidentally enough, was also a police officer from this general area) from that Tour took years to effectively get the message to "piss off".
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