Your Papers Please

I don't know how to write that title in a German accent, so if you would be kind enough to just go back and read it in your best black and white Nazi movie accent I would appreciate it. I'll wait. Done? Good. This morning I heard a really soft knocking on my door. The way the apartments are positioned around here I almost always here some sort of knocking or hammering or something. I wasn't sure it was anything but I decided to go check. Just as I got to the door I looked out and saw two people in uniform heading back toward the elevator. I opened my door and they came over and started talking to me in rapid Chinese. The people were two police officers, I can't tell exactly what type, there are a lot of different uniforms around China. They kept trying to explain to me what they wanted, but I had no idea what was going on. Finally they flipped through big book with lots of sheets of paper coming to one in English and thrust it into my hands. It was pretty confusing. It seemed like some sort of survey about who lived there but included weird lines which went something like, "this is to make sure you received all the correct propaganda." I was starting to wonder if they were about to give me a big picture of Mao to hang up. They saw that I still didn't really understand what was going on and one of them called David, so they clearly were either with the school or knew a lot about the school since they knew who to call. David said they wanted a copy of my visa and passport, which I didn't have, but when they took the phone back they didn't ask about that anymore so I guess David said he'd give them one on Monday. Finally they flipped to another piece of paper and had me put down my country, but looked disappointed when I wrote it in English, and had me put down my phone number, which I "accidentally" got wrong. Finally they basically shrugged an left. I didn't see if they had been to the other two apartments on my floor before but they got into the elevator after talking to me. It might sound sort of disturbing to be visited by the police and it would have been if they weren't such a comical looking pair. It was one man and a woman. The man was half a foot shorter than me and had the bad teeth and leathery skin of a long time chain smoker. The woman was at least a foot shorter than me and he uniform was at least two sizes to small. They looked more like police from a Monty Python skit than the Gestapo. Still a very strange way to start my day.