zaiShanghai

A dreary morn­ing in Shanghai. Clouds cast the city in gloomy gray shadow, rain fell inter­mit­tently on the heads of pedes­tri­ans. At the entrance of the Jinshajiang Road sub­way sta­tion, lug­ging my lap­top bag and lis­ten­ing to music, I reached in my pocket for my iPhone, changed the song, and put it back. Moments later, the music cut out. I plunged my hand back into my pocket only to find it empty. My head­phone cord trailed down my side, dan­gling limply, attached to noth­ing. Could I have dropped my phone? I hadn’t heard it hit the asphalt. I searched the ground fran­ti­cally.

“Who took my cell phone,” I shouted. “Who did it?” Passersby stared at me in curios­ity, won­der­ing at the girl yelling in English and caus­ing a scene. Suddenly, a man swept past me to a scooter-taxi and pulled a girl out of it. She was young, around my age, and was accom­pa­nied by another girl who was clutch­ing a baby in her arms. “You took it, didn’t you? Give her back her cell phone!” the man said, shak­ing her arm. “Did you take my phone?” I asked her. She met my eyes for a moment, looked away, and reluc­tantly pro­duced my phone in her out­stretched hand. Relief flooded over me, and I thanked the stranger who cap­tured her.  “It’s noth­ing, I am a cop,” he explained, and showed me his badge. “I heard you shout­ing in English and I under­stood. I saw wrong­do­ing and I had to act.”

We called the secu­rity guards and traf­fic police over and explained the sit­u­a­tion. One of them told me to wait a moment, that I’d have to file a wit­ness report. We waited for a police car to arrive. It seemed I was sur­rounded by police, yet none of them had the author­ity to actu­ally arrest the girl. She started wail­ing dra­mat­i­cally, and her com­pan­ion had to sup­port her to pre­vent her from slid­ing to the wet ground. “Ali! Ali!” her com­pan­ion cried. Was that her name? I observed their faces—their large deep-set eyes and bronzed skin didn’t appear to be Han Chinese. Rather, their facial fea­tures looked more Middle Eastern. These girls might have been Uyghur from Xinjiang.

A squad car arrived, and two more police­men approached. One looked at the girl, started rep­ri­mand­ing her, and smacked her on the head. I made a sound of protest. A crime didn’t merit phys­i­cal abuse. She wasn’t fight­ing or resist­ing either—hitting the poor girl was gra­tu­itous. The two girls set­tled in the back seat of the police car, buried in each other’s arms and wip­ing their tears. The other police­man and the plain­clothes cop exchanged some words. The for­mer asked me some ques­tions and indi­cated for me to sit in the pas­sen­ger seat. I left my cell phone num­ber and my name, and he told me that they would call if they needed fur­ther assis­tance.

I pro­ceeded toward the sub­way stop, and an elderly Shanghainese lady started walk­ing with me and ask­ing me what hap­pened. I explained how I nearly had my cell phone pick­pock­eted. “Wow, you’re so lucky,” she said. “You’ll have to be care­ful in the future.” I agreed, and we parted ways.

Perhaps I would feel more embit­tered towards the girls if I hadn’t man­aged to get my phone back, but I couldn’t help but feel sym­pa­thy towards them. At first glance, they appeared to be dressed in rel­a­tively fash­ion­able clothes. However, upon fur­ther inspec­tion, their high boots and pea coats were grungy and dusty. What does a usual day in their shoes look like? How many meals might my phone have pro­vided if they had suc­cess­fully stolen and resold it?  As I stepped into the sub­way sta­tion, a street ven­dor had laid out a vari­ety of phones on a box for sale. These phones had pre­vi­ous own­ers as well, and were quite pos­si­bly slipped from their pock­ets just like mine.