Thief in the Night

Yesterday I thought to myself I would write a blog post about my latest adventure in China. I had gone to this beautiful gorge called Dragon's gorge. Nestled right outside of Beijing are serene mountains with a beautiful lake in the middle. They have all types of outdoor activities such as bungee jumping, water gun fights, tabaggon, walk across a zip line and you can go canoeing. It was a beautiful day, followed by dinner and drinks.

Then last night something insane happened. Around 10 oclock in the evening a security guard buzzes at our door. Not thinking twice we open the door. He starts montioning in Chinese something about delivery. I decided to call my friend Emma to translate. He tells her someone smelled gas and he wants to come and look. So we let him  in. Meanwhile in the hallway you can here other security guards on their walkie talkies. He comes in, he checks the stove. I call my other friend. He tells her oh he has to check the box. (What box we wanted to know, but figured it was a translation issue). He looks around smelling the electric outlets (which was just weird, gas doesn't come from outlets!) He leaves. An hour later my room mate is like hey I can't find my phone can you call the phone. So we call it and its turned off. That is a sign your phone has been stolen in China. We tear apart the apartment, no phone. The security guard stole her phone!

So we get are other room mate and march down stairs to find the guy. We run into this guy who happens to help out in the building with translating. He helps us. We call the police and decide to search the compounds for the guy. We find him. We start yelling at him, you stole the phone. All the guys looked sheepishly and say no he didn't. My room mate persisted, about five minutes later the security guard pulls out the phone out of his pocket. He then is like oh sorry sorry. (in Chinese). At this point the police have already been called. We want the guy fired, they just want to let it go.

The police show up, we are showed into this little office and have to wait for a good 30 minutes. Then we find out the boy is only 14 years old and he was kicked out of school for bad grades and his dad found him a position as  security guard. He can't be arrested because he is so young, he is a minor so he is protected. The security guard is now crying, his dad is full of shame. He comes and apologizes. The dad apologize and the manager of the guards apologize.

The biggest thing of all that irked all of us is that he came into our apartment and stole something. And all the other security guards just wanted to let it go. They wanted him to save face, and not own up to it. They all knew he took the phone. Its better for him no to admit he stole the phone then own up to it. Meanwhile a 14 year old boy should not be working as a security guard of an apartment complex. We also think that is was some kind of initiate thing for the guard. We heard other guys in the building, the whole situation was just out of ordinary. Honestly the whole thing I could have seen being on an episode of cops, Beijing style.