Chinese Taxis

There is nothing quite like riding in a taxi in Asia. For me there is no other option. I live in Chaoyang on the eastern third ring road and work in Haidian, in the northwest. Without any traffic this would mean a reasonable 20-minute commute. But this is China, and even though most people cannot afford a car, there are too many for the roads to handle, so the traffic is brutal. I leave for work between 8am and 9am, and a typical ride in to work takes 40 minutes and costs about 40 kuai (kuai is a colloquial term for RMB, the Chinese currency. 7RMB = 1USD). The return trip is about the same, making my normal commute almost an hour and a half. Although subways exist, a line going from my apartment to work is still under construction, to be completed by June 30. This will save me money (the subway costs 2 kuai) but not time. Taking the bus is not an attractive option; it is even slower. So, I commute by taxi.

Fortunately this time is not completely wasted. I am learning Mandarin through the Pimsleur audio program (and now a private tutor as well), a kind of "listen and repeat" thing. The wonderful Seattle Library system has these rather expensive discs available for free, which I ripped and loaded on to my iPod. Each morning while commuting, I do a lesson. This no doubt drives the taxi drivers mad. As soon as I start responding to the voice only I can hear in barely intellibigle Chinese, they usually turn up the radio to drown me out. I also listen to the Economist in audio edition, usually on the way home.

Getting a taxi in Beijing is not a problem in most areas. Probably 20-30% of all vehicles are taxis. Finding a taxi becomes difficult when it rains, and sometimes during peak hours it can take more than 5 minutes to find an empty taxi. The meter drop is 10 kuai, which gets you 1km. Most of the places I want to go from my apartment are a 10-15 kuai ride.

Communicating with taxi drivers can be challenging. They do not speak a word of English (nor do I expect them to), so foreigners have two options: look like an idiot and get around showing business cards with your intended destination, or learn to speak enough to direct them around. My first priority language-wise was to be able to get around without the use of cards.

I learned that taxi drivers do not really understand adresses, nor do they know road names. Navigation is done by landmark; you describe your destination relative to a well-known location. For me that is Zhaolong Fandian, a hotel about a block away from my apartment. My current repetoire of phrases is:

• I want to go to a place near Zhaolong Fandian, to the south
• Not this exit, the next one (they always want to exit at the wrong place)
• Go strait, turn left, turn right
• Here is OK

This is enough to get by, but I've asked my tutor to prepare a lesson on directions so I can learn to tell them distances, etc., and maybe even understand when they ask me questions about the route.

Now, as anyone who has travelled to the less-developed areas of Asia surely knows, riding in a taxi consists of constant lane changes, frequent honking, and reckless disregard for lane markers. There really is no way to describe the experience sufficiently. You just have to experience it, and accept it.

And of course, there are no seat belts.

The bizarre thing is that the seat buckles in the rear seem to have been removed intentionally. The belts are in place, but there is nothing to buckle them in to. I can't fathom why this is, but this is China. The front seats do have seatbelts, but these do not always work (a taxi driver in Xi'An was greatly amused when Eugene tried to use the dusty, unusuable belt and subsequently apologized for the act of trying to buckle himself in, as this implied the taxi driver was not a safe driver, which was of course true). Fortuntely (in a way) most of the time the taxi is not travelling nearly fast enough to be a dangerous. At night time though, things move pretty fast on the ring road, so I always take the front seat so that I get a belt, even if I'm the only one riding.

I look forward to the subway Line 10 becoming operational. Not because it will be much better; it will merely be a different sort of massive inconvenience. But at least it will be an alternative, and leave me with more beer money.