Sleeping policemen
(Police hut near Jinji lake: Suzhou, China)
As I’ve said before, we live in the very new SIP district (Suzhou Industrial Park) in which the oldest part is a mere fifteen years old. This is a familiar sight in the area, a little Police hut. It has all the appearance of a tiny house and is usually replete with several officers drinking tea, talking, nodding off or on the phone, but they seem capable of doing more than one of these activities at one time.
I think there’s a certain amount of glamour inherent in being a Chinese Police officer, especially the cars. They look low, fast and smart, but in a rather American, eighties cop show manner. I’ll have to include an image of a car once I snap a good one – I really wanted to take a photograph of two officers in a car yesterday. I was walking home from the supermarket with a couple of bags and just didn’t bother (for the first time ever) to take my camera. It could have been a beautiful shot, and you would have enjoyed it; the car was ‘parked’ in the corner section of the bicycle lane, as if it was pausing, about to react to a call. I wondered why the car was stationary right in the centre of the lane – perhaps they had broken down, or were concentrating on a serious, urgent issue. When I took a closer look, I felt a slight rush of panic, they were slumped over the steering wheel and the dashboard, as if hit by drive by bullets. On closer inspection, they were of course, asleep.
I was so impressed when I first saw the police hut outside your place.
However, every time, when I passed there I saw nobody inside.
Even when some one violated the traffic rule, no policeman appeared,
so I decided that is for show; at least, for the time being.