Enrico Mingardi spent a good part of the morning with me explaining his ideas on hew to im

prove the water-bus service in Venice. Being the chairman of the ACTV, the public transportation company, he discovered that some of his ideas weren't very popular. But he did think it would be easy enough to change the timetable on one line.

Almost immediately, he told me, a request was delivered from people who liked it better the old way. "They collected 750 signatures against the change," he recalled, "so I said OK, I'll put it back." He put it back. Another request arrived. This one carried 1,500 names of angry residents protesting the reversion (复原); they had liked it better the new way.

"Were some of the names the same？" I asked, joking.

He shrugged. "Sure," he replied.

Venice. The mere name makes people think of its astonishing 1,500 years, an incomparable heritage of art, polities, and commerce. Ten million visitors a year arrive to wonder at the remains of its glory, the architecture and paintings, and to be seduced (诱使) by the dreamlike charm of a place that seems to exist somehow apart from real life, a kind of baroque (巴罗克式的) style, floating in mist and shadow, entranced by the continual murmur of the water as it never get tired of kissing the stones.

But Venice is not a dream. In these days it is facing more than its share of reality. In fact, as the event of the bus requests demonstrated yet again, Venice at heart is a classic small town, trapped in the body of a monument.

To begin with, Venice actually is small. You could walk from one end to the other in an hour. And you will walk, because the streets are usually the size of an average sidewalk, or less. Walking, as much as the surrounding water, dictates the shape of Venetian life: the reasonable pace, the sudden street corner encounters with friends, the pause to talk. Among the many things the Venetians love about their town—no ears, virtually no crime—this intimacy is the best. They like to say their city is like a living room.

Is Venice still sinking？ This is the question everybody outside Venice seems to ask. In a word, yes, though the rate has slowed, mainly because the pumping of groundwater for industries on the mainland has been stopped.

What is Enrico Mingardi？

A．He is in charge of the public transportation.

B．He is responsible for the improvement of the water-bus service.

C．He works for a TV station.

D．He is the chairman of a public transportation company.