By Zhou Jinping

Smartphone Magic

By Zhou Jinping

1

A hair salon in a certain residential quarter was doing red-hot business.It was common for clients to wait for one or two hours for a hair stylist to give them a magic makeover.At some point, someoneproposedsettingoutsome magazinesforclientstoreadwhile waiting.

Apparently,it was not very effective. Fewpeopleactuallyreadmagazines these days.People still complained about the slow speed of service.Some people would rather quarrel about others butting in line ahead of themthan read a magazine and wait for service.

Finally,the owner installed wireless internet in the store after getting a hot tipfrom a“someone in the know”. Argumentsovertheline-jumping problemneverhappenedagain,and everything was orderly and peaceful.

2

A thief did his business for years on the train.His skills had supposedly gotten increasingly sophisticated as time went on.However,he has recently grown more uncomfortable on the train.He has always had the feeling that someone was staring at him when he got on the train.

One day,the thief got on a soft sleeper coach of a train and went into a room with four beds.He pretended to be asleep when he went inside and spied on the other three people.They were allplaying ontheir smart phones.One person started to fall asleep after a while when the other two still played on their phones;several hours later,the first person woke up and another person fell asleep.It seemed that they were each taking shifts with one“on duty”while the others slept.

The thief left the train empty-handed. He couldn’t believe for the life of him thatanyonecouldhaveknownhis identity.It turned out that the other three found him strange as soon as he got on the train.How could a young person resist playing on his cell phone when sitting for hours on a train is so boring? He must be hiding something.Therefore, the other three people added one another to their friends circle through WeChat,a social network app,while the thief was totally in the dark about it.

3

Sitting in the marriage registration hall in the Bureau of Civil Affairs,many young couples took out their phones to record the magnificence of the moment and share it with friends while waiting for their certificates.They took selfies, shared pictures on“WeChat Moments”, and read comments.Some people logged in on QQ,an instant message software, wrote micro-blog entries and chatted on WeChat.It was busy time on-line.

Two janitors at the Bureau of Civil Affairs chatted while on their break.One of them found a couple quite different and strange.They didn’t talk with each other or kill their time on their phones. The other commented that they must have come for a divorce.

Not surprisingly,the couple went out after getting their certificate,but one turned left and the other turned right.

4

Thefthadbeenrampantintwo residential quarters in recent months.It wasmajortroubleforthepropertymanagement company.

After reviewing what had happened, property management firm decided to employ several young,strong security guardstopatrolQuarterAand strengthen the efforts during the night shift.One month later,peace returned to Quarter A.However,theft was much more serious in quarter B because there were fewer people living in it and they didn’t have sufficient budget to employ moresecurityguards.Theproperty management company was quite worried about it and didn’t know what to do.

One day,when the director of the propertymanagementcompanywas contemplatinghowtosolvethe problem,his college son gave him a pieceofadvice.Asexpected,the security in Quarter B also improved.It turned out that free WiFi was installed in Quarter B.As Quarter A and Quarter B were adjacent to each other,the WiFi signal would radiate to the front gate and side gate area.The WiFi would be turnedoneverynightandsecurity guards from Quarter A would come to the WiFi area of Quarter B during the nights patrol.Therefore,more security guards in Quarter B would be arranged to patrol in the other weak areas.

(FromComedy World,Vol.7,2015. Translation:Li Li.Illustration:CFP.)

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