One morning we took our second trip on scooters back to the police station with Susan to get some business finished up with our residence permits. On our way back, we just happened to run into a drama queen. We were scootin' along at full speed and I drove really close between the queen on her scooter, and a parked car. Luckily there was no contact between us and the queen, but Susan wasn't so lucky. It's all kind of a blur because it happened so quickly, but I think we startled the lady and she turned her wheel and closed the gap so Susan, who was following close behind us, couldn't make it as easily as we did. We quickly turned around and went back to see if everything was okay, and after a minute of analyzing the accident, everyone seemed fine. You could tell the queen was a little upset about being knocked over, but we all drove away without any problems.
Just when you thought everything was going to be okay, the queen comes up from behind and starts yelling stuff in Chinese at Susan. So we awkwardly sat there for a few minutes watching Susan battle it out in Chinese in the middle of the scooter lane. Susan isn't naturally contentious, so she kept her cool, but we can't same the same thing about the queen. Thirty minutes later, after awkwardly waiting on the corner for the police to show up, the show really began.
I think the police here are just magnets for attention when they show up to resolve conflicts. It was incredible to watch the amount of people that were immediately glued to the situation. One guy even got RIGHT in-between the officer and Susan to get in on the action. We thought for sure he was either with the police or with Susan, or somebody, but nope, he was just a friendly Cangzhou civilian that wanted to get in on the gossip. As soon as he spotted us, he quickly wandered over and parked himself right next to us, staring intently at us as we tried to figure out what was going to happen next. We think he was trying to figure out if we could speak the language, and if we understood what was going on. He thought it was pretty hilarious because he had a big grin on his face. There was such a crowd of people by the end of it, that traffic was completely stopped in the scooter lane. We were somewhat grateful in this situation to not speak the language, so we didn't have to witness to anything. Susan took the brunt of everything. To add to the situation, Susan's sister was going by on a bus and stopped to get off and help protect Susan. She got right up in the police officer's face and was yelling at him. Apparently she's pretty fiesty. Everthing seemed like it was going to be okay, until they started loading scooters into the back of the police truck. They took the queen's scooter, then Susan's scooter, and then our scooter. Now we were upset. Things just weren't making sense, and nobody would explain to us why or what was going on. Susan eventually got us a taxi, and we just obeyed and went back to the school. We were so confused.
When we returned, we were feeling rather unsettled so we said a prayer that everything would work out. Within an hour, Susan called us back and told us to come to lunch and she would explain everything there. So we went to lunch and found out that the police take everyone's scooter as standard procedure to an accident and they would return our scooter one day later. As far as Susan's situation, the details still needed to be figured out. I don't think Susan would have to pay for any damage, because all the queen had wrong was a bruise on her leg. Truthfully, we felt really bad about the whole sitaution, and really wanted to do something to make it up to the lady, but she was out to make a scene, which made us not feel as bad.
The next day we got our scooter back and Susan told us that everything was working out well. We hope that lady is okay, and everything worked out for Susan.
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