IgloONotes

Would you ever think that you could define a whole country simply by riding in taxi? On the way to your destination you can see the scenery that flashes by. On the radio, you’ll know what type of music they listen to and most importantly, while sitting in the passenger seat, you’ll fully understand what the locals have to drive through on a daily basis.

I never really thought much of the blue and yellow cabs that roam Windsor. You see them parked outside of shopping malls and airports, waiting for new customers. They’re essential in our lives and yet we just don’t notice… that is, until I went to China.

You’ve all heard of the game Crazy Taxi right? Just the name of it brings flashes of yellow taxi’s zooming around downtown New York. You always hear of the people who complain about the crazy taxi drivers (me including) but I never fully understood why. If anything bad happened on the road, you blamed it on the taxi.

After riding in a taxi on the weekend I've come to both appreciate and, forgive me for saying this, desire Canadian taxi’s.

The first impact of Taxi’s in China is a sheer mobs of them. On the highway there’s a taxi. On the side road there’s a Taxi. In an accident there’s a Taxi. Everywhere you look, there’s a taxi. In China, they’re even more essential to society, allowing business men to get across town in less time than it takes on a bicycle. When it finally comes time to step inside your taxi…hold on to your seatbelt!

Yes, you read that right, hold on to your seatbelt. If you ever did buckle your belt, you’ll be returned with a nice black streak of dust across your chest. Of course, the moment your taxi clunks into first gear, you’ll be wishing you were strapped in with a five-point harness.

The way these guys drive is just plain scary. They don’t use turn signals, they don’t look in their blind spots, and surely don’t let people into their lane; it’s controlled road rage.

You can imagine the relief for me when there was open road with no other cars. But for the taxi drivers, that just means that there’s no one to see them breaking the law. Stoplights turn into red streetlights and lines on the road just become suggestions.

The really nice drivers stop at the red lights. The good drivers turn into the bicycle lane to ‘avoid’ the lights and the normal drivers simply downshift a gear.

So what is it like inside the car? Apart from being scared for your life, you’re cramped in your cushion that they call a seat, smelling what the last passenger had for lunch. On your right, you have the door that feels like its about to fall off and on the left, you have a steel cage that’s supposed to keep angry passengers from the driver, or in my case, demanding that they drive safer.

The suspension would be a driver’s dream…for a boat. Every bump it hits is accompanied by a crash, followed by a series of bobbing up and down like a pogo stick. It would be great for kids, but for anyone else, it’s just nauseating.

The few positives thing that I can take from Chinese taxi’s is the ice cold Air conditioning that always works and the extremely cheap fares; a ride across town will only cost you five bucks. Not to mention that if you're late to work, you can depend on the taxi to get you there on time. Compared to Canadian taxi’s though, and it’d be like comparing a ford Model T to a Mercedes Benz S class. So the next time you see a yellow taxi running around, be happy that you’re in Canada…be very happy.

Tags: beijing olympics, Beijing taxi, roads in beijing, taxi