Greetings from Guangzhou – Day 13

*at the police station*
Police: Please sign here.
Me: Okay… *signs report*
Police: Write this above signature. *points to sign showing 20+ Chinese characters*
Me: What?!?
Police: *stifles giggle* You can take your time…

Whilst the policeman was very polite, my colleagues were not – they burst out laughing uncontrollably. Kum Seng, my manager even had the cheek to say, “If I could, I really want to take a picture of you writing Chinese characters” Grrrrr…

My office administrator told me to lodge a report with the Guangzhou police because I was covered under traveling insurance and can claim back the money taken. And so, there I was lodging a report in my broken Chinese, trying to tell Mr. Policeman about my incident the best I could. He wrote the whole report in Chinese, and needed me to write above my signature the standard, “I hereby validate that all within report is true etc etc” statement.

Trust me, that was the ugliest looking characters EVER WRITTEN in the history of Guangzhou police station *shakes head in disbelief*.

At least the policeman was kind with my language and written disadvantage, can’t say the same about the aunties at Wanglaoji factory serving my factory a.k.a. prison lunch. Am used at getting scolded already, “What do you mean, you know how to speak Chinese, look Chinese but cannot read our CHINESE MENU!??” *sob sob…*

Am pleasantly surprised with how advanced Guangzhou is. Their buses are very frequent – only about a 5 to 10 minute wait. MTR is very comfortable. The corridor of the apartment we’re staying in actually has ‘detect-sound’ lights, it saves lots of energy by switching on only when a person is around. Haven’t had a bad toilet experience; before I came everyone was telling me how the toilets in China does not have doors. The streets are really clean, they have rubbish bins every few metres; heck, even Malaysia isn’t this clean.

Economically and technologically they’re more advanced and competitive. There’s a wide range of cars on the road (I actually saw a police car that was a Honda City), mobiles, computer devices at very competitive prices (MP3, MP4 players, sound system players are dirt cheap), plus lots more. The only thing I find lacking is perhaps in the people. They’re very rude, rough and unhygienic by spitting everywhere :P

Very unfortunate that my human experiences hasn’t been too well…