Briefly, Nanjing – Last Impressions

“Are there cameras here?  Quickly!”

I was sitting in the backseat, watching the cab driver communicate with another driver on the phone.  He was desperately trying to find his way to the airport bus stop.  I felt bad, because my destination was actually the airport hotel.  My flight was the next morning and there was no hurry at all.  The nervousness was contagious, however.  I decided to hush and let him do his job.

“Alright, am I turning here or what?  Are there cameras at this intersection?”

The two drivers were speaking in a dialect.  I could make out the general message of what they were saying.  Judging from the context, I did not think it was the dialect of Nanjing.  This driver was markedly different from the old Nanjing that picked me up on my arrival three days ago.  Clearly, he did not know his way in Nanjing.

I estimated that he has delayed the journey for five to eight minutes longer than it should have been.  The afternoon traffic of Nanjing did not help either.  He was very nervous throughout, clearly a result of the surveillance.  Any wrong turn could cost him a ticket.

Soon enough, I recognized the back corner of Nanjing station, where the airport bus picked up its passengers.  Yet I was overjoyed.  The nervous driver made a wrong turn to a through-way that seemed to lead to a tunnel.  That would have led him to another part of the town.  He was about 20 meters into this through-way when he realized he has made a wrong turn.

The driver at the other end of the line told him to simply back out from where he was.  Before he even asked, the other driver said, “don’t worry now, there are no cameras there.  Just calmly back your way out to where you made the turn.

This ride cost ￥25 instead of the ￥40 that I paid on my arrival.  That confirmed my suspicion that I was ripped off on my first day here.  Before I left, I asked the nervous driver what dialect he was speaking.  He said it was Henan.

As I boarded the airport bus, I had in my mind the last impression of Nanjing that uncannily echoed the first.  The surveillance cameras in the city clearly had an effect on the everyday lives of its people.  I sighed, wondering if the police state would, rather inevitably, extend its reach to Hong Kong.

I could not shake off the feeling that our days of freedom are numbered.