Some people will do anything to avoid paying one trifling fee or another. Take parking for example. One Nanjing man has been handed the maximum penalty possible for covering his car’s license plate with a homemade equivalent to simply not fork out a pittance.
It was just recently that traffic police in Nanjing’s Lishui District received a report from a member of the public that a man had obscured the license plate of his car in such a manner as to deceive automatic plate recognition technology.
The man, surnamed Xing, created a false number plate by copying the standard Chinese design, substituting another number, and printing it out on a sheet of A4 paper, which he then cut out and fixed over his car’s genuine plate.
As reported by The Paper, it is believed the man in question went to all this length so as to avoid a few renminbi in parking fees.
A surveillance camera mounted by a car park entrance captured the moment the car approaches. But then the paper number plate appears to conspicuously flag around in the breeze, revealing its fake identity.
Xing then gets out of the car and attempts successfully to reaffix the paper plate. He then backs up his car to again approach the entrance, whereupon his fake plate performs perfectly and the barrier opens.
His antics can be watched in the video posted online by local media via this link.
The incident has attracted both laughter and tears from the online Chinese community.
Xing’s bizarre behaviour might have been more logically explained had he been leaving the car park with the fake plate attached, as opposed to entering, since it is conceivable that he may have parked the car there for months, if not years. Such was the reality that came to the fore during the the first COVID lockdowns of 2020.
By way of punishment, Xing faces an unspecified fiscal penalty, while his license has also been taken away from him, with the maximum of 12 points added thereto.
