Chinese Taxis
Taxi drivers in Xi’an don’t give a shit
Taxi drivers in Xi’an don’t give a shit. Especially during rush hour. Especially when the sun is beating down so oppressively that you can feel the heat of the pavement through the thin soles of your cheap sneakers. Especially when you have only one hour before your train to Shanghai and you need to get to the hotel, grab your luggage, and then get back to the train station. Especially when you’re desperate.
You hail a taxi. The driver rolls down the window and asks where you want to go. You tell him. He scoffs, shakes his heads, rolls up the window, and drives away. You hail another taxi. You tell the driver the address. He drives away. You hail another. Another. Another. Another. You have hailed at least twelve taxis. You are now shouting the address. You say “Fuck it!” and throw open the door to a taxi and sit in the front seat and give the address. He angrily yells at you to get out of the taxi.
My friend, Jordana, suggests we try our luck on the streets outside the train station instead. I can see that she is panicking. It is 4:30 PM and our train leaves at 5:30 PM. Given the state of Chinese traffic during rush hour, it’s extremely likely that we won’t make it. I try to keep calm. Outside the train station, there are hordes of other frantic taxi flaggers like us. They are being rejected in droves and our chances are not looking very bright.
I think about how I have come to China to fulfill storybook clichés about reconnecting to my heritage and roots. I think about all the essays I wrote to receive funding for this trip. They centered on the guilt and sadness I felt growing up too American. I wrote in rich detail about how my life was colored by Chinese culture and tradition. I lamented the slow languishing of a language that had once been mine. I yearned to really feel Chinese again, to be proud of this part of my identity. I thought that returning to the Motherland that I had not seen in eleven years was the key to it all.
But right now I hate China and I just want to be back in America, land of the free and home of the taxi drivers who drive you where you need to go. I don’t ever want to be like these people who spit on sidewalks, pee on national landmarks, cut in line, and drive between lanes.
Most of all, I really hate taxi drivers. One pulls up and offers to take us where we need to go for 30 RMB, which is three times the normal fare. I’m disgusted. It’s a classic case of Chinese people taking advantage of others whenever they can. We are desperate and he knows it. We are spoiled rich foreigners and 30 RMB is nothing to us. We will be ripped off.
We climb into the taxi and I tell the driver that if he’ll wait for us to get our luggage at the hotel, and then take us back to the train station, I’ll pay him another 30 RMB. This is China. Everything is about bribery or trickery. He agrees. I relax — but not too much, because you always must be on your guard in this ridiculous country.
The taxi driver asks me if I am Korean, a question I am often asked. I apparently have a Korean-esque facial structure. “No,” I say, “I’m Chinese American.” He asks me whether I think there is a big difference between Chinese and American mindsets. I say, “No.” I am not in the mood for conflict. He tells me they are extremely different. “Americans are so unpatriotic,” he says. Chinese people are extremely patriotic. This is what makes China great.
Dude’s seriously drunk the Communist Party Kool-Aid.
“Americans are so dumb,” he says. “They can only think in one straight line. Americans all follow the rules and can’t imagine any other way to do things. Chinese people are clever. Chinese people can devise multiple paths and schemes to get to what they want.”
Yes, and this is precisely everything that I hate about China.
He’s off on a tangent about how China is so, so powerful. “America owes China a lot of money now,” he says. Ha! “America is so unsafe too — the lazy government can’t even control people’s guns! America is so arrogant. They think they’re the world police, always getting in other countries’ business.”
“Once, I drove a thirty-year-old man who went to school and lived in America for a long time, and was coming back to live in Xi’an again. You know what he said? He said Americans were helping the Iraqis during the Iraq war! Bullshit! I told him to get out of the country, because he was not a Chinese person anymore. He was brainwashed through and through. I told him that he should have never come back and to go back to America!”
He also hates the Japanese. “Everyone hates the Japanese,” he says, “even Koreans.” When he picks up people who speak funny Chinese, he asks them if they are Korean or Japanese. If they’re Japanese, he tells them to get out of his car. He refuses to drive Japanese people. He refuses to visit Japan, ever. Even if Japan was the greatest place on earth to visit, he still wouldn’t go.
“You know it was Xi’an people who smashed all the Japanese cars in the streets right? Now no one will drive a Japanese car. You won’t see any Japanese car on Xi’an streets!” What an accomplishment. Really something to be proud of.
He lectures me:
“You are a Chinese person. This is your homeland, and you must always remember that. In your heart, you only truly have room for one country, and it must be China. You must love China. This is where all your ancestors and family are. You are young now, so you don’t know yet, but when you grow old, you will wonder about your identity. You will want to come back here, because this is where you come from. This is where you will always come from. You must never forget this.”
When we finally get on the train, after pushing through crowds and crowds of bodies, we collapse, sweaty and dirty, onto the beds and breathe a deep sigh of relief.
