The Unabridged Story of the Lost Cell Phone

Saturday December 27, the second day my mom was here, I lost my cell phone. Or, more specifically, I left it in a cab. This was bad for numerous reasons: I had no other way to communicate with people (save for Facebook), I had an enormous amount of minutes on the phone at the time (China has no cell phone plans, it is all pay-as-you-go), and I had plans to go to the Great Wall the following day with my friend Kara, her mom, and my mom. Since it was after midnight when I lost the phone (I had been out Karaoke-ing, hehe), I decided the best thing to do was simply return to the hotel where I was staying with my mom, and worry about everything in the morning. Jumping back in time a bit, when my dad first arrived in China for business a week before he came to visit me, his company lent him a chinese cell phone to use for business purposes. When he left China, he gave me the phone and the address of his business associate's office, and asked me to mail it back to the company. Now jumping forward in time to 11:30 A.M. the morning after I lost my phone, I remembered that I still hadn't mailed the phone, and in fact, had it sitting in my backpack. So, needless to say, I whipped it out, went online to Kara's facebook, got her cell phone number, and called her. Turns out, she and her mom were already on their way to the Great Wall, but it was at least good to call her and let her know what had happened to my poor little cell phone. There was, however, still one thing that needed to be taken care of. My host sister was expecting a call from me to let her know when my mom and I would like to go out to dinner with the host fam. Which brought me to my second predicament: I didn't have my host sister's number. I only had it saved in my phone, which was long gone. I was also a wee bit scared to admit to my host family that I lost my cell phone, because I knew they would be slightly irked by my stupidity. So... I'm not sure when it was, but eventually I realized that I had my host sister's number written down in my room back in my host family's apartment. I finally gathered up the courage to tell my sister that I had lost my phone on Tuesday, which was the same day I was supposed to call her regarding the family dinner. I returned to the apartment, found her number, and called her from the host fam's home phone. Upon learning that I had lost the phone, she was surprisingly nice, and promptly announced that she had lost a total of 7 phones in her life. That made me feel exponentially better. Anyway, she told me that we could go out to dinner that night, and that we would worry about the lost phone then. Here's where the story gets a little more interesting. As we were walking into the restaurant that night, my sister told me that we could get all my minutes back (300 kuai's worth), and have the cell phone company save them for my next phone. She wasted no time, and as soon as we had been seated, called the phone company. The service person at the other end of the line was unhelpful at best, and after my sister bickering with him for quite some time (I didn't catch much, but I did hear her say in fast, slurred Mandarin, "I think you have a listening problem" and "Give me your manager. YOUR MANAGER. Do you know what a manager is?"), she hung up and announced that I couldn't get the minutes back unless I had the pin number of my cell phone, which had been given to me on a small card when we had bought my cell phone and first round of minutes (literally the first night I arrived in China). So at that point I began to think that this whole ordeal wasn't worth it... I had no clue where the card with the pin number on it was, and I knew I would never see my cell phone again. But my sister was adamant that we keep trying. In addition, while she on the phone with the phone company, my mom called my cell phone number and SOMEONE ANSWERED. And my mom said "Hello? is this your phone number?" and the person said "yes" and then conversation went on for about another 30 seconds before my mom announced that she was the owner of the phone and the person on the other end hung up. Before the mystery person hung up, however, my sister managed to shout across the dinner table that we were going to call the cops if they continued to use the phone. And i've got to admit, my sister can be pretty intimidating at times, so I thought she might have intimidated the "robber" at least somewhat. After dinner, I returned to my host family's apartment to look for the questionably legendary pin number card. And miracle upon miracles, I found it sitting in my desk drawer. My sister called the phone company and this time had success removing my minutes from the lost phone. She also told me we could go online and find out who the people who were using my phone had called. Although I was tired from all this excitement and would have preferred to return to the hotel and get some sleep, she insisted that we go online to find the outgoing phone numbers that my phone had called after I lost it. Large predicament number three: After we had typed my phone number and pin number into the website in order to view the numbers my phone had called, a notice came up saying that the phone company was sending a password via text message to my phone, and we needed to type that in to continue. That, of course, did us no good. So we got offline and my sister said that she would take care of everything tomorrow. I was content with that. The next day, wednesday, I went to a movie with her. Here's where this excruciatingly long story actually starts to pick up a bit... on our way to the movie, my sister whipped out the extreeeeemely long list of every number I had called in the month of December, and told me that she had gone to a China Mobile store earlier that day and used a pretty clever method to get the list. Here's how she did it: In China, every phone has a SIM card. It is what gives your phone identity and holds every piece of information you have stored on it, from your phone number to your contacts to your text messages. If you put your SIM card in someone else's phone, and then turn his/her phone on, that phone will now have your contacts, your texts, and your phone number. If people call your number, It will now ring on their phone. My sister got my phone number and minutes taken off my SIM card and put on a new one, and then put the new one in her phone so that when the company sent the verification text (the one we needed the night before when we were trying to find my phones outgoing calls online), HER phone would receive it. Pretty smart, actually. And while she had my new SIM card in her phone, someone called my number. She answered, and discovered that this someone was a coworker of the person now in possession of my phone. She didn't realize they were a coworker of the "robber's" at first, so she asked them who they were, and they said they were Mr. Wang, and that they were the day time driver of taxi number suchandsuch. She thought it was peculiar, but didn't know exactly what to say, so she told them this was her number, and hung up. Now jumping ahead in time to when we were on the way to the movie... we were taking a look at this mile long list, trying to figure out exactly when the first call was made after I lost the phone, when suddenly my sister said "wait, I recognize this number...". And what do you know? The first number the "robber" (presumably the taxi driver who drove the taxi I left my phone in, coworker of "Mr. Wang") called after getting my phone was the same number that called my sister when she had my SIM card in her phone. Using our FBI minds, we concluded that this number was probably important, so my sister called it right before we went into the movie and a lady answered. My sister asked if she knew a Mr. Wang and the lady said no. And then my sister went into hard-core mode and began being a little less friendly to this stranger lady. She told the lady how she had gotten the number and what the situation was, and then announced that she would be promptly calling the police if the lady didn't cooperate and tell her what she knew about the situation. Then my sister said thank you (in mean voice, of course) and hung up. Meanwhile, I was sitting in the backseat pretty much astounded at my sister's detective skills and determination to get my phone back. The funniest thing is that my sister viewed this whole thing as kind of fun, like a game. She sounded mad when she was on the phone with the lady, but as soon as she got off, she looked back at me, smiled, and laughed. I love having a big sister. So anyway, after we got out of the movie, my sister got a call from the 北师大 (the university my school is associated with, near my house) security police saying that someone had brought a phone in and told them to call this number. 

And just like that, I had my beloved phone back. 

P.S. My sister later got an angry text from the lady saying "You got your phone back. Happy now?"... hehe. We had a good laugh over that.