I got into the Taxi, the driver started briefing me on the situation in Russia and Ukraine, and the reason we have to support our Russian Daddy.
“Because they are the defence line against the invasion from the West for us. Without them, we are done. When the lips die, the teeth feel the coldness. (It is a Chinese idiom.)
I listened to him in silence. Then I asked: “How is business lately?”
The driver sighed. Then he said: “This year I could hardly cover the cost”
Then he told me a story.
In the Wechat group for the drivers, there is a young man who came from out of the town.
Last year, he came to town to drive for Didi, with 50,000 yuan, all of his saving.
He rented a car, for 6,000 yuan a month. After paying his house rent, he was losing money every month.
After half a year, he most lots of his saving. He made up his mind to go home, he said that at least the company will refund him the 20,000 yuan deposit.
But the company made up all kinds of excuse to keep the deposit.
The young man found that there is no way for him to get his money back, so he started committing suicide live in the group.
One group member called the police.
The police came and went with the young man to the company.
The company gave him some money back. And the young man went back to his hometown with the money.
In the end, the driver sighed: “Our country is not easy. The Americans and the Europeans are making it hard for us, the economy is becoming worse and worse. Luckily, we can still hold on. We just make do. “
Today I was going to the hospital for a small operation.
The driver was very chatty, he was praising the traffic jam the whole time: “Now there are many cars. It is a good thing. We are normal now.”
Me: “How is business these last two years?”
“How can it be? I am eating my savings. And I am a local, driving my own car. “
So I told him about the driver from out of town who tried to commit suicide.
He started cursing: “Who made him so stupid? He dared to rent a car during the COVID?! He can not blame anyone else.”
Me: “What do you think of the company that tried to keep his deposit?”
Driver: “They were not wrong, they should keep the deposit. It is lawful, decided by the laws.”
Me: “As far as you know, are there anyone who returned the cars got their deposit back?”
Driver: “No, all the deposit was taken according to the laws. There is nothing you can do. You will lose if you sue them. They should keep the deposit. There is a contract, you know? If you violate the contract, you will not get the deposit back! “
I said “oh”. After some silence, I asked: “Didi is recording this in video and audio the whole time to protect you , right?”
The driver pointed at the camera next to the mirror: “That thing, Didi required us to put it there 4 or 5 years ago. Every car had to. We paid for it, 550 yuan for one. Now they don’t require it, but our phone is on all the time.”
Me: “Now they don’t require it, so you don’t have to turn on the camera, right?”
Driver: “Once it is there, it is all up to Didi, we don’t care. “
Me: “Are you saying that the camera has no switch, and you have no authority to control it, right?”
Driver: “Right, Didi is in charge of it. We put it there, and never touched it. The phone is recording the sound. Both are recording. “
Me: “Then, the camera and the phone, their recording data is on your device locally, or transmitted to the server?”
Driver: “They listen when they need it. Normally no one cares about you.”
Me: “When they need it, do they ask you for the disc, or they can find the data themselves?”
Driver: “They don’t come to me, they have it. “
Me: “Oh, so they are transmitted to the cloud in real time. They can listen whenever they want to. “
Driver: “Of course. We are chatting now. If the topic is wrong, the phone will remind you to drive your car carefully. “
Me: “What is a wrong topic?”
Driver: “Those that you should not say.”
I pretended to be stupid: “Is it talking badly of Didi?”
Driver: “It is just some topics you are not allowed to talk about, do you know? The moment you say it, the phone will remind you to drive carefully.”
Me: “So, do you think it is done by AI or manually?”
Driver: “It must be the machine. This is nothing, because I am driving a normal taxi. For luxury cars, the drivers are not allowed to speak with the passengers.”
So, on the way back, I chose a luxury car.
Indeed the driver was very quiet.
After 10 minutes, I asked him: “Didi had a rule that forbid you to chat to the customer, right?”
The driver laughed, he said: “if the customer want to talk to us, we can not ignore. “
Me: “So they forbid you?”
Driver continued to laugh: “The most important thing is to drive carefully.”
Me: “They record you the whole trip to protect you?”
Driver stopped laughing: “It is to protect both sides. Some customers don’t know the boundary, saying things that are not allowed to say, we will then remind them.”
Me: “What is not allowed to say?”
Driver: “Those that one should not say.”
I did not want to make it difficult for the driver so I did not ask more.
The driver continued the silence.
In this spacious car, I felt as cramped as in real life.
This is a country where no matter how much you have to say, you can only stay silent.
Taking a taxi ride in China used to be a political adventure. The drivers knew all the rumours and gossips. Last time I was in a Taxi in Beijing with a chatty driver, he told me who owned the company that he obtained the medallion from — the offspring of a former chairman of the Chinese military. This business is extremely ludicrous. Zero investment, zero liability, endless cash income. And it is not just unique in Beijing, every city has a princeling (offspring of key power figure in the CCP) who own the medallion for Taxi business.
In recent years, taking Taxi is much quieter. I have not thought about how it is related to the surveillance system everywhere in China. The state of the mind of the taxi drivers are particularly interesting. They not only do not mind being monitored all the time, they also agree with the surveillance: there is no harm, and it is for good. They accepted that “there are things one should not say”. It is not just on the macro issues (Ukraine war…) that they totally accepted CCP propaganda, but also on their own personal business, they are on the side of the company that abuses its power, not on the side of their colleagues who are bullied.
To me, this mentality is extremely common among Chinese people, nowadays. It is like Erjiu in our newsletter 83. People accept the system as they accept gravity. It is up to the individuals to “play a hand of bad cards successfully”. If you can not, too bad. No one is there to help. And, of course, as we have seen in our old newsletters, again and again, anyone who tried to help others will be punished.
China was not like this before, people used to know the rights of individuals and would fight for each other’s rights. Some times they even scored big wins. That is, of course, until dear supreme leader started tightening the control of speech step by step. Chinese people used to love to quote Haruki Murakami :
“If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals […] We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it’s too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us – create who we are. It is we who created the system. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, Feb. 15, 2009)”
In our previous newsletter, a girl was arrested for wearing Japanese clothes in Suzhou, a city not far from Shanghai. It turned out that after she was arrested, the police forced her to leave her clothes and shoes and socks with them. She had to call a friend to bring new clothes so she can be dressed and go home. According to Beijing Youth Paper (a state owned media), on the night of August 19th, the police visited the girl’s family, had a chat with them, returned the items, and expressed their care of her.
CAC, aka Cyberspace Administration of China, is the Chinese government department that Elon Musk wrote a love essay to. Mr. Musk, being an absolute freedom of speech believer, must be thrilled to hear that news.
Meanwhile, while heat wave is menacing most part of China, energy (especially electricity) became in short supply. Many factories in South-west China were ordered to stop working for 5 days (August 15-20). Electricity was cut off in residential areas during certain times of the day.
Still, there is not enough electricity to ensure the supply chain for Tesla’s factory in Shanghai. So Shanghai government wrote a letter to Sichuan government, asking them to ensure electricity supply to produce the Tesla parts. Somehow the letter was leaked to the public, and Sichuan residents who are suffering blackouts in high temperature ( routinely reaching 40°C ) were outraged.
Now I understand why Mr. Musk loves CAC so much.
According to Southern China Morning Post, videos of pandemic medical workers giving live seafood PCR tests have gone viral on Chinese social media.
Vice also reported it.
This video popped up on my TL so much that it is causing me discomforts!
A Taiwanese Youtuber, 好棒Bump, has been travelling to Cambodia to rescue Taiwaneses who were trapped in slave camps there. In July, he uploaded his recent experience. He shared his journey (warning: graphic details in some of his stories) and also shared that many who tipped him off to save others were murdered in turn. The video got 3 million views and got the Taiwan government’s attention. Now, according to AP, under the pressure of Taiwan government, “Cambodia on Friday said it is attempting to aid foreigners who have been victimized by human traffickers.”
Scammers, mainly from China, have used Cambodia as a base for extorting money, [Cambodia Deputy National Police chief Gen.] Chhay Sinarith said.
Taiwan’s government on Friday said 333 of its citizens were stuck in Cambodia after being lured by crime groups promising high wages for tech jobs, based on reports from families asking for help. The situation is complicated further because Cambodia is a close ally of China and refuses to recognize Taiwan or have any official contacts with the government in Taipei.
Taiwanese media have been reporting extensively on the plight of those trapped by the networks. Police at Taiwan’s main Taoyuan International Airport have been patrolling with signs warning of the dangers of bogus offers of high salaries in Southeast Asia.
Taiwanese authorities have also been reaching out to travel agencies to uncover the scams, and more than a dozen people have been arrested over recruitment schemes that aimed to dupe young people into jobs advertised as high-paying positions in computer engineering and similar fields.
Meanwhile, there are also estimated thousands of Hong Kong people and people from mainland China being the victims of the scam. Hong Kong government’s response is:
“In response to the scam, HK gov confirmed that in 2022 there remains 5 HK citizens who remain unreachable in Cambodia. In a recent press conference, HKs Immigration Department asked victims to “download” an app AND then a form to declare their need for help.”
In his video, Bump told a story of a man from China who have led a team to free trapped foreign slaves in Cambodia, rescued 300 victims, until he was framed by the Cambodia police and put into jail. We have not heard of a peep from the Chinese government. BTW, I did read stories of Chinese victims months ago on Twitter. The victim claimed that his blood was taken from him on a daily basis and he almost died, had he not escaped.