Pick pocketed on Yancheng

Yup.

I'm walking along after buying my dinner from a street vendor when I feel like something is wrong. I immediately check my bag (which is a satchel that goes along my side) and notice that the zipper is unzipped. Upon looking inside I realize my wallet is gone as well.

The annoying thing? I know exactly who did it. I pursued him, yelled in Chinese "you took my wallet", but he ducked into an alley.

This is about the time where Taylor's sensible side kicked in. Without myself fully noticing, I had taken stock of the situation and realized about twenty things at once, the important ones being:

1. I don't know what is in that alley. He obviously trusted it enough to go into it, thus I should NOT put faith into it.

2. I don't have the vocabulary/enough knowledge to hold a confrontation with someone. Had he decided to flatly deny it, what could I do? Absolutely nothing.

3. Do I really want to deal with the police in China?

3. I'm not dumb enough to keep anything valuable in my wallet.


So, angrily I turned around, came home, and set in motion getting a new student I.D. I'm grumpy about the whole thing, mad at myself, but also partially relieved.

I know exactly why I was pick pocketed. I was a foreign female, wandering around alone with a side-bag. Not only that, but I had JUST bought my dinner, so the man was able to see exactly what my wallet looked like, and exactly where I put it. Additionally, due to just purchasing food, my hands were full and my attention was clearly not on my bag. I never heard it unzip, I didn't feel him take it. I just remember a little click in my head saying "that man's movement out of the corner of your eye is out of the ordinary. Check yourself." and then I felt my mouth go numb and my brain went into "Oh dear something important is happening" mode.

Short story longer, I'm mad that I appear to be an easy target, but glad that I'm not dumb enough to fulfill easy-target status, a.k.a. keep important things on me or in my wallet. I did lose about 100 yuan, and a newly loaded metro card, but at least I am not in a foreign country with a canceled debit and credit card and no form of I.D.

Yay for planning?

On a happier note, my family should all be rousing from bed in an hour or so and preparing to start the birthday festivities of my awesome Grandy-pa!

I do believe that I am holding off until his actual birthday for a formal blog post were I will spazz-out because he is SO OLD and yet also immortal.

Until then- I love you all. Be glad I didn't pull an Alice in Wonderland and duck into a rabbit hole (dark alley) after a white rabbit (shiny red wallet).