I should have seen it coming. In fact, I did, quite literally; it happened right before my eyes.
That’s why if you ask me whether to take a taxi or the metro, my answer will lie in the latter. For I be forever scarred, mentally rather than physically.
It was 1993 and I had just arrived in China, to Shanghai. There were no e-bikes, just millions of push bikes on the roads. All of them at once it seemed. Meanwhile, the only motorised vehicles to be seen were taxis, the government or the military.
The taxi in question was a Xiali TJ7100U. See one today and consider yourself lucky; they are a rare find indeed. Especially those not damaged by accidents such as this.
Manufactured between 1990 and 2000, this one was red, and the hatchback version. Getting in outside our hotel dwelling, the driver acknowledged us and our destination, and then proceeded to drive out of the City Hotel’s forecourt and onto Shanxi Lu.
And straight into the side of a bus.
Still in Shanghai, in those days a taxi ride from Puxi to Pudong involved a toll. Why remains a mystery, since in 1993 there was nothing there. Nevertheless, the City’s enterprising drivers, being true Shanghainese and not ones to miss a trick, realised that a hapless foreigner could easily be convinced that it be necessary for them to pay the driver another toll in order for the driver to return across the river, running on empty as it were. Most happily did. The drivers’ resulting MO, quite obviously, was to simply hang around in Pudong for a bit and wait for a fare back across the Huangpu, and hence pocket the additional toll. Not rocket science, but it worked. Most of the time, but not always.
And I still have an extra love line on my hand to prove it.
Then onto Nanjing, where there was to be that which turned out to be a narrowly-avoided and potentially-serious spinal injury.
The year was 2009 and we had just exited the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in a southerly direction to ascend that long section of single-lane and elevated road that leads downtown, when…
Bang! Rammed from behind.
Struggling around to the back of the car, it was immediately apparent that my neck had taken the brunt of it all. Why, oh why could that taxi’s rear end not have been completely destroyed? That would at least have been a comfort of sorts.
The irony, of course, is that those were the good old days. Today, passenger and/or driver above’s behaviour would likely land them with a law suit faster than you can say the last four digits of your phone number.
And in the meanwhile, the world has grown. Chinese cities are bigger now. Today, taxi drivers need three phones and five apps to simply make it around the corner.
But once a taxi driver, always a taxi driver. And often with the attitude to go with it.
Bringing this tale up to date, one evening a few weeks ago, this correspondent ordered a Didi to go just a few kilometres for a journey totalling just 16 minutes in duration (to my chagrin, no Metro station nearby).
The driver was, as we say, a piece of work. Talking loudly on speakerphone to his friend, he was blissfully unaware he was being understood.
“This customer is a pain in the ass; had to wait ages for him as he went to the wrong gate.”
No, YOU went to the wrong gate.
“I’m going to drop him the hell off as soon as possible then come and meet you.”
That’s Nanjing taxi drivers for you, or at least some of them.
