Picked Locks, TIC, and the Cultural Revolution.

I lost the key to our apartment this morning on the way to school. Because Katie left her keys at home, we had to call our landlord for help. He in turn telephoned the "lock company," which insisted that he couldn't request a locksmith because he wasn't the tenant. So I asked him if they spoke English, he said yes, and we tried to phone them, only to discover that they could not in fact speak "American." (Which is what I mistakenly called it in Chinese) So I called Kevin back, he talked them into meeting us, and we headed home.

On the way home, Katie had a little incident with a fellow cyclist. Katie was cruising down an on-campus road when the rider in question pulled right in front of Katie and cut her off. Katie did not sustain any injuries, but the other rider quickly locked up her bike and tried to run away. One would think that the other cyclist would have stopped and apologized, but as the expats like to say, "T.I.C." (This Is China)

After Katie's bicycle incident, we arrived at our apartment to discover that the "lock company" was in fact the Public Security Bureau, i.e. the Police. And the "locksmith" was some guy who carried an expensive leather briefcase, wore really nice shoes, and could pick the lock on our front door in under 20 seconds. 240 RMB later, we were into our apartment, proving our tenancy with a copy of our rental agreement, and collecting our extra key.

That afternoon, we had an interesting "off the record" discussion with one of our professors about the Cultural Revolution. Though the Cultural Revolution is generally a taboo conversational topic in China because of its political aspects, our professor spoke openly about the need to learn from China's mistakes, and the dangers of trying to sweep them under the rug. He concluded by saying that although he had some strong personal memories from those times, he chose not to delve too deeply into them for fear of the pain involved in reliving them. Suffice it to say, however, that our professor watched "revolutionaries" beat one of his parents when he was just a little child, and grew up largely without the other, who was imprisoned for "counter revolutionary" activities. It's amazing to think that they've come so far in just 30 years.