The bullet train to paradise

Hangzhou is all over the news these days for nothing good, sadly. The city’s public security kid Inflatable Snowmen is under huge waves of suspect, specks and revaluation. And the name of paradise city is being taken away gradually all by itself. I am not sure if I am in the position or entitled the right to have a say. Yet I cannot suppress the impulse to voice my opinions.

Pretty commercial Jumping Castles much at the same time about a year ago, the collapse of Hangzhou Metro project under construction caused tens of lives lost. First off, the government was very slow at responding to the accident, not to mention taking measures to rescue the people trapped. Until now, I could still clearly remember Hangzhou’s media wasn’t playing an active role enough to expose the whole issue and push the authority into effective action. Basically they rescued none and the most intriguing thing came straight down to the fact that it took them over a month to excavate all the dead bodies. What the heck they were doing and thinking about! How could they not take life seriously! How could they be so careless in the face of life and rescue! And how could it be taking so long possible to find all those casualties, let alone rescuing the victims within 72 hours effectively and without delay. While they are supposed to fight with all they could to save those lives, they actually had done very little if at all – far from enough, at least, regarding the grave situation. At the very beginning, Hangzhou’s media was very active in uncovering the accident, a contrary to the way they were later on – they were silent. Or have they been silenced? With barely any on-going exposure at the last stage, the issue, then, became a distant memory. Who knows anything about the lives lost and how the government compensated related families?

If that was not enough to make up an eye-catching headline, the recent scandals of traffic accidents would serve to be good news materials. In the case of May 7 accident, a student of the local Zhejiang university was hit dead by a fast running car – the student was hit to 5 meters high and over 20 meters away according to the local witnesses and he was dead on the spot. The accident was soon spread nationwide on and off the internet, in a rapid way that I had no clues about. A few days later, the local government declared his driving speed to be 70 miles an hour and not a mile more, which the public was against. 5 meters high and 20 meters away – some experts on car racing assumed it to be 120M or so, give or take 10M. The public was infuriated because they sensed the authority, including the government and the police alike were in favor of the criminal and were making up stories to cover it up. To make compensation to the victim’s families and settle the matter, the wealthy criminal’s family paid out slightly more than 1 million. Later on, the criminal was detained for about 2 weeks before the court took place, announcing 3 years of service in prison due to the traffic accident. Such penalty was sure to not alleviate the public outbursts of anger. Given the situation that the criminal was speeding in the city centre densely inhabited not for the first time, the mass wasn’t buying in. And just when the court ruled out penalties, rumors had it that the criminal present wasn’t the one who committed the crime. That meant it was only a replacement taking the penalty. Such suspects soon spread everywhere first via the internet. Netizens lay out a level of details and in-depth analysis that the criminal looked so different from when he was caught where the accident took place. Just within two weeks, he has incredibly become so much fatter. If the shape could change within a short time, the way one behaved couldn’t be misleading and wasn’t going to blind the decision-making. To eliminate any doubts, defuse the public anger and defend its credibility, the court declared it was the real criminal himself, present and under penalties. Again, people felt and it seemed as though both the scale of justice and authorities were one-sided in favor of the criminal. Money moves and authority maneuvers. People were unchangeable in their belief and gut about the replacement scandal and thirsty for truth and justice. At last, the issue was appeased when mainstream media reported the interview with the criminal in prison who admitted crime and expressed repentance. One last thing that haunted me was, how could he be possibly gaining in so much weight with a heavy heart, feeling sorrowful at the loss of life he carelessly caused and sorry for his family for all the trouble? Certainly, lack of activities and the nice food there didn’t justify that.

While there was no indication that the negative impact Hu caused on the city was about to over, another scandal about car racing came to people’s attention. A wealthy local man raced in the city centre, hitting a 16 year old girl dead, her body and blood on the zebra crossings. Investigation showed that was a drunken driving case also. So as you can imagine, Hangzhou was an easy target this time without a doubt, due to the frequent accidents. Zebra crossings weren’t a safe place to cross the road in Hangzhou, so reported in an published article. It was more of a speeding train to send you to paradise. Hangzhou, the paradise city, eccentrically, has opened the bullet train to paradise, which means hell the other way round.