I don't know what things are coming to when perfectly honest citizens get stopped in the street and have their bags examined. A nice state of affairs!

My comments:

The speaker is being sarcastic. The situation is anything but nice.

State of affairs a formal phrase for, put simply, any situation, the way things are currently. In this case, the state of affairs refers to the situation in the street, where citizens get stopped and have their bags examined.

Nice? It’s anything but, hence the sarcasm.

“I don’t know what things are coming to…” here, the speaker wonders how things have come to be so bad and fears it may get even worse.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點(diǎn)，與本網(wǎng)立場(chǎng)無(wú)關(guān)。歡迎大家討論學(xué)術(shù)問(wèn)題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發(fā)布一切違反國(guó)家現(xiàn)行法律法規(guī)的內(nèi)容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.