The closest I’ve come to a real interaction with the Shanghai police is a phone call my ex-girlfriend made on my behalf back in 2008. The thugs guarding the brothel in my lane got in a bloody fight with construction workers from the site next door, and it looked like someone was going to get killed. She wasn’t with me at the time but spoke better Chinese than I did so I phoned her up and asked her to call 110. The operator wanted to know if any weapons were being used — in fact, it was steel nunchucks versus sections of bamboo scaffolding, but she didn’t know that. To convey the urgency of the situation, she tried to tell them that yeah, they had knives, but pulled the wrong piece of cutlery out of her vocab drawer. The operator laughed at her when she said they were fighting with forks, but some squad cars arrived soon enough anyway.

Established in 1999, the Public Security Museum offers it’s own strange account of law enforcement dating back to the founding of Shanghai’s first police force in 1854, during the days of the foreign concessions. It also contains more guns than the entire Arnold Schwarzenegger filmography.



The museum is located near the intersection of Ruijin Nan Lu and Xietu Lu, just a couple of blocks south of Tianzifang. It costs 8rmb but when I went they didn’t even bother to sell me a ticket. Parked on the ground floor are an armored vehicle, motorbikes and sidecars and a beautiful old convertible with fender flags and flashing lights mounted on poles. You’re probably gonna want one of those.

The rest of the museum is spread over floors three and four. The historic portion stars a few waxwork figures of pukkah Brits and Indians fresh off the gunboat. There are also glass cases containing medals, taxidermy carrier pigeons, a Mauser C96 handgun hidden in a pipa case, and a wide selection of whistles. There’s even a foot-long slide whistle owned by the only police officer in history with a sense of humor.



Another display features the taxidermy remains of a German shepherd called Victory (胜利), who died in 1957, aged 11. That’s 67 in dog years, according to dogyears.com, so he lived a good life. The possessions of 62 fallen human officers — mostly gold watches, 80s aviator sunglasses and dirty bank notes — are displayed alongside their bios like so many Miami Vice props.




In the criminal investigations hall, things get pretty dark. A photograph shows a woman’s head, arms and legs arranged around the missing jigsaw piece of her torso. The pubic hair of another female corpse is visible where her skirt has been pulled down during a sexual assault. Heavy tailor’s scissors are planted in a human skull. There’s reasonable English language signage at the museum, but no warnings about the graphic content. Suffice to say, leave the kids at home.



The museum also features displays of contraband including a roulette wheel, a cricket fighting arena, a Hong Kong porn mag from 1997 (the cover girl wears purple-tinted glasses) and books by the Falungong, practitioners of a highly subversive brand of YoChiLates. There are also samples of drugs including hash, hash oil, coke, opium pods, heroin, meth and ecstasy (literally translated in Chinese as "shake head pills").



Confiscated weapons include ornate daggers fit for sacrificing virgins, meter-long machetes, ninja stars, cross bows, assault rifles and much more. The museum has an even larger selection of weapons used by the police themselves, including oddities such as guns hidden in walking sticks, 38mm single-shot grenade launchers, and a Gaulois, a French handgun that resembles a pack of cigarettes. Best of all is the intricately decorated Spanish gold pistol owned by Sun Yat-sen.



And, moving quickly past the more mundane traffic cop and fire fighting sections, that’s about it — except for the bizarre ground floor gift shop, which sells everything you need to impersonate an officer. Among its offerings are cylinder shaped metal police whistles (18rmb), police caps (38rmb), traffic direction paddles (70rmb) and white gloves with reflective silver strips (120rmb). Stranger still are the “super bright” Shanghai police flashlights (220rmb), TW 306 tazers (170rmb), and sew-on badges of Shanghai’s very own Confederate flag, the foreign concessions star (25rmb).

One annoying thing about this place: they don’t like you taking pictures. But what are they going to do? Arrest you?

For a full listing of the Shanghai Public Security Museum, click here.