It was sunny when he set out. After crossing the Dabie Mountains, the clouds in the sky began to thicken. As he approached Fuyang, a few raindrops even splattered against the windshield.
In the past, when traveling on inter-provincial expressways, you had to swap your IC toll card at each provincial border, settling the toll for the completed section before starting anew in the next province. Every business trip left Lin Song with a pile of toll receipts to file for reimbursement. This time, however, he truly understood what a “seamless journey” meant. He collected his IC card at Hankou North, entered the G42 Shanghai-Chengdu Expressway, and didn’t settle the toll until he exited at Yingshang East from the Chuzhou-Xincai Expressway. There were no intermediate charges—it was a single, uninterrupted trip.
Yingshang, a county under Fuyang’s jurisdiction, was much like any other county Lin Song had visited: wide roads, sparse traffic, and pedestrians mostly on electric scooters.
A SF Express autonomous delivery vehicle moved slowly in the slow lane. Lin Song had just seen the same model operating on the streets of Hankou last week. This driverless vehicle was a radical design—no cockpit at all, just a cargo container moving on its own.
His client’s company was in an industrial park not far from the expressway exit. Eight years ago, when Mr. Chen came to Yingshang to set up his factory, he bought the third floor of Building No. 5 in the park—a space of over 1,800 square meters—for less than 2,000 yuan per square meter. In recent years, the factory had gradually become profitable, finally surviving the losses of its first two or three years. Now, housing prices in Yingshang had risen to four or five thousand yuan per square meter, and the market price for factory space had surpassed three thousand. Mr. Chen remarked with a sense of satisfaction that starting this factory had turned out to be a worthwhile venture after all.
At noon, Mr. Chen treated Lin Song to “chou guiyu” (stinky mandarin fish), a famous dish from Anhui province. Lin Song recalled his years in Shanghai when a Mr. Lu would often take him to an Anhui restaurant near his home, where the stinky mandarin fish was a must-order. Mr. Lu had once been in the tourism business in Huangshan City.
When they stepped out of the restaurant after lunch, it was already raining.
“The typhoon is coming.”
“It’s already pouring in Shanghai. I saw on Douyin that the water in the Suzhou Creek has risen above the roads on its banks.”
“That’s probably the tide backing up. Every year around this time, the Suzhou Creek floods when a typhoon hits.”
“In that case, I should head back now.”
“Going back directly? You drove four or five hours to get here. Aren’t you going to look around Fuyang?”
“No, it’ll take another four and a half hours to get back. Any later and it’ll be dark. Besides, with the typhoon coming, the heavy rain will make the roads unsafe.”
“Alright then, I won’t keep you. Drive safely.”
On the expressway, Lin Song tried his best to leave the dark clouds behind in his rearview mirror. He thought to himself that this was a race against the typhoon.
He turned from the Huai’an-Neixiang Expressway onto the Anyang-Luoshan Expressway, heading south.
As he sped along, Lin Song spotted two small, dark figures in the far distance. They certainly weren’t cars; they looked like motorcycles. He had encountered motorcyclists on urban expressways before, usually speeding along in the slow lane.
Lin Song glanced at his speedometer. He was doing 125 km/h, yet he didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the two dark figures ahead. His curiosity piqued, he wanted to see who these daredevils were, racing on the expressway.
He pushed the car to 135 km/h, the maximum speed limit. Any faster and he’d face a hefty fine if caught by a speed camera. He decided that if he could catch up at 135, he’d take a look. If not, he’d just have to admit they were impressive and let it go.
It took him nearly two full minutes at 135 km/h to catch up.
He could finally see them clearly from the side: a pair of motorcyclists riding together. They wore black helmets and black riding gear, and Lin Song couldn’t identify the model of their bikes. As he drew level with the first motorcycle, he saw that there were two people on it. The person on the back was clearly a young woman, her long hair flowing out from under her black helmet.
Lin Song did a quick mental calculation. Their speed must have been over 110 km/h. He remembered his old Jialing 125 motorcycle, which would start to gasp for breath once it went over 45 km/h.
An expressway is like a great river, splitting towns and villages in two. If, when the expressway was built, his second uncle’s and youngest uncle’s houses had ended up on opposite sides, they might have only seen each other during holidays or for major family events over all these years. So close, yet a world apart.
He was eager to get home.
A man drives 843 kilometers in one go, without the slightest inclination to linger for an extra day. How tired he must be of the journey.