Chapter 1762 - Doing Things According to Law

Pan Jiexin had no idea that someone was drawing conclusions from his lunch-box. His mind wasn't on eating. He exchanged a few words with the sergeants at the table about the morning's formation drills, then turned the conversation to physical training.

Since the Wanshou Palace grounds were too small to accommodate all one thousand trainees at once for both living and learning, today's opening class consisted only of trainees with some reading and writing ability—roughly three hundred men. According to Pan Jiexin's plan, the first session at the Wanshou Palace would run on a rolling-admission basis, with a new class starting every ten days. On day ten, he intended to send the trainees onto the streets, led by veteran assimilated police officers, to carry out real tasks. After ten days of field internship, they would return for supplementary instruction, and then the second batch would "roll out" for their own street rotation. This approach would maximize the use of both space and personnel.

But it also meant time was even tighter. Which subjects had to be taught, which could be abbreviated—this was the question constantly revolving in his mind.

Time was short. Lunch was limited to thirty minutes. Immediately afterward, the entire cohort was required to follow the sergeants on a half-hour walk—compulsory, no exceptions.

Li Ziyu marched in circles around the parade ground with his squad, feeling like a fool. But if you took the grain, you obeyed the rules.

Once the walk ended, afternoon classes began at once. The first session was Police Theory, taught by Pan Jiexin himself.

"I'm certain that most of you in this room have never understood what 'police' actually means. So today's first lesson is to explain what a policeman is." Pan Jiexin spoke with easy fluency. "Police are different from the constables and bailiffs you're familiar with. Fundamentally, you are police because your daily work constitutes a police function." He paused and glanced at the puzzled faces before him. For a crowd that spoke only seventeenth-century Cantonese-accented Mandarin, grasping these concepts was no simple matter.

He continued: "The Senatorial Council, acting in accordance with the will of the Council and the people, employs armed, administrative, and criminal means to maintain the security and social order of the Great Song—this is called 'police activity.' And you, as practitioners of this activity, are called 'police.' Please turn to page two. I will now explain some of these terms in detail."

Fortunately, this class consisted of trainees with some literacy. Under Pan Jiexin's painstaking explanation, these future police officers of the Senatorial Council managed at least a rudimentary grasp of what the word "police" meant. When the police apparatus was first being established, several Senators had been unenthusiastic about teaching so-called "police theory." But Ran Yao had supported Pan Jiexin's position. The reasoning was simple: if a force didn't even understand its own identity, there was no hope it would develop strong combat effectiveness.

Pan Jiexin was in the middle of his lecture when he noticed a trainee raising his hand. He nodded for the man to stand and ask his question.

It was none other than Li Ziyu. He spoke somewhat stiffly: "Report, Chief! Student Li Ziyu. I have a question. My grandfather used to teach me the Book of Documents. I still remember the stories of the situ and shi officials from the time of Yao and Shun. I was wondering: if those officials were transported to today's setting, would they be what you're calling 'police'?"

Pan Jiexin nodded approvingly. "You've read quite a bit! Those officials were similar to the police I'm describing, but in most respects, they were not police. Li Ziyu's question is excellent, because I was about to distinguish the constables and those ancient situ and shi officials from the Senatorial Council's police."

Pan Jiexin recalled that as a freshman, a professor at the People's Public Security University of China—who taught Fundamentals of Public Security Theory—had raised this very issue. He knew that the "police" of slave and feudal societies had wielded police powers without the name of "police." The exercise of police authority in those eras was extremely lax under the law, and extra-legal enforcement was commonplace. Moreover, the private punishments that modern critics so widely condemned were pervasive and even served as supplements to ancient police functions.

In Ming-era local yamens, Quick-Class runners not only handled public order and criminal investigation but also served as jailers. The common expression "sitting in the ban fang" actually referred not to a state-run prison but to a detention facility privately operated by the Quick-Class chief. Because the ban fang was not part of the official penal system, it became a lawless world where the runners did as they pleased.

"We know that in Ming government offices, there were Quick-Class and Strong-Class runners, as well as the so-called unofficial white-robed constables attached to them. They didn't have the name 'police,' yet they performed work similar to police duties—and their remit was extraordinarily broad, covering everything from tax collection to street sanitation. But their so-called law enforcement was highly arbitrary; some of it was outright illegal. And its purpose was not to maintain public order but simply to extort money. That's an example of the traditional 'police' I described earlier." Pan Jiexin paused and sipped his now-cold tea. "The Senatorial Council's police, by contrast, have a dedicated police administrative organ called the Police Headquarters. Its director is your Chief Ran—that's the central-level institution. And every locality has a corresponding organization: the Guangzhou Municipal Police Bureau and the various precinct stations, all under the leadership of superior departments. Furthermore, every aspect of a policeman's daily conduct must be carried out in accordance with law. So as police, the first thing we must do is become familiar with the law."

He unfurled a wall-chart and pointed with a teaching baton. "These laws are the foundation of our enforcement." He tapped the book-images on the chart one by one. "Police Law, Public Order Law, plus Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, and Civil Law. If you later transfer to a specialized police branch, there are also the Sanitation Law, Tax Law, Traffic Law, and so on." Seeing the blank expressions on most trainees' faces, Pan Jiexin decided not to elaborate further. "These laws all feel unfamiliar to you. In the future, you'll have opportunities to study them in depth. But for now, you can simply understand them as our Senatorial Council's equivalent of the Ming Code."

The trainees' expressions finally showed a glimmer of understanding. Pan Jiexin continued: "However, these laws contain many provisions, and the relationships among them are quite complex. So, to help you quickly and accurately grasp what you need for your work, you should focus on these materials."

He turned to the next chart page. "Procedures for Handling Public-Order Cases, Procedures for Handling Criminal Cases, Disciplinary Code, and Field Handbook for Basic Police Personnel. These four books will be distributed once regular classes begin."

Pan Jiexin gave a brief overview of the contents, significance, and usage of these "Four Books," then added: "The Handbook in particular is full of practical examples from start to finish—a truly invaluable textbook. Read it carefully, commit it to memory, and when you apply it in your actual work, you'll find it becomes second nature."

The afternoon session ended quickly. The famished trainees lined up for dinner, followed by another half-hour of "walking in formation," and then "evening tutoring." Assimilated police officers served as instructors, providing remedial cultural lessons. Since this group was literate, the content consisted of vernacular reading and writing, as well as basic science and general knowledge. At the same time, individual tutoring was available for any material the trainees hadn't understood during the day's classes.

Li Ziyu sat in the classroom looking at his newly issued textbooks and felt a touch of despair. He had always dreaded studying; he'd become a policeman partly for a livelihood, partly to have an honorable excuse not to attend community school anymore.

Who would have guessed that as an "Australian constable," he'd still have to study—textbooks crammed with unfamiliar vocabulary, no less!

Studying was one thing, but even the way he wrote and composed had to change. This was far harder than community school.

Back there, studying had been tedious, but the pace was leisurely. For someone like Li Ziyu, who had already memorized the Four Books and Five Classics and could bluff his way through an essay, absent serious examination pressure, going to school had merely been a way to kill time. The community-school teacher knew Li Ziyu held hereditary military-family status and had essentially let him drift.

But this course was something else entirely: there was a "syllabus," a "schedule," and endless "key points." Understanding the meaning alone took all his effort. The case-handling procedures and case analyses, at least, were fairly straightforward; Li Ziyu found himself absorbed in them without realizing it.

And what he read astonished him: The Australian police meddle in more than a busybody's dog!

In his understanding, police work meant nothing more than catching thieves and keeping order on the streets. But for the Australians, "keeping order" was all-encompassing. And the concepts were completely different from the Ming government's.

Take the simplest example: street brawls. In theory, that should be the main business of "keeping order." But Li Ziyu knew that the yamen had always followed a policy of "no complaint, no investigation." As long as a fight hadn't killed or seriously injured anyone, and no one filed a formal complaint, the authorities generally ignored it. If the parties wanted to settle accounts, they privately engaged the Quick-Class chief or some powerful runner to preside over a "lecture tea" at a teahouse.

But for the Australians, even without death or injury, a fight had to be stopped on the spot, the parties brought in, a written record made as a formal "case," and disciplinary action assigned according to responsibility. Li Ziyu thought: Isn't this asking for trouble? After all, officialdom's motto had always been "big matters become small, small matters vanish."

Reading on, he discovered that even defecating and urinating in public, dumping slop-water, or tossing garbage in the street were things police had to prohibit. He sighed inwardly. Then came cracking down on street peddlers, demolishing illegal structures... It covered everything; there was practically nothing the police didn't manage. Being an Australian policeman is really hard, Li Ziyu thought.

Whether he understood it or not, he had already boarded the Australian "pirate ship" and had to follow their rules. Fortunately, years of traditional schooling had honed his memorization skills. He decided he might as well deploy his talent for rote learning—first commit everything to memory, then worry about the rest.

(End of Chapter)