The Good Cabbie (Where in the world am I? [25])

As an antidote to my two recent 'Where in the world am I?' posts, which were both uncommonly negative and rancorous, I thought I'd like to share with you a more positive impression of my adopted home, a happy moment that I experienced a few days ago.

Taxis (and, more particularly, their drivers) in this city are an easy target, a favourite griping point for both foreigners and locals. It's true that there are many annoying quirks about the service (to which I may return at a later date). Taxi drivers are notoriously surly, unaccommodating, and sometimes downright aggressive. Frequently they are hayseeds from the outer suburbs, or from even further afield in the provinces; thus they tend to speak in guttural, incomprehensible accents, and to have a very shaky grasp of the city's geography. A few I've encountered have even been worryingly shaky on the basics of car control. But these are old complaints. The city's Taxi Supervision Bureau seems to have enjoyed a significant injection of funds in recent years, and has actually started doing its job: the days when any sun-burnished migrant who could claim some familiarity with his village's tractor would be able to get a taxi licence seem to be over. And our lives are a little less colourful for it.

Of course, many of the drivers are still pretty terrible and 'bad taxi experiences' continue to be a favourite topic of conversation wherever foreigners gather together.

However, I really do think such experiences - in my own life, at any rate - are getting rarer and rarer. And they have always been counterbalanced by the occasional 'good taxi experience' - something that can lift the heart and put a smile on your face for days!

On Sunday evening I was heading up to a party in a favourite music bar in the University district to the northwest. The driver I happened to hail was pretty old, maybe the oldest one I've ever had. And he was pretty experienced too (a low number on the driver registration card is always a good sign: some of these guys have been doing the job 20 years, and really do know the city like the back of their hand; they won't boggle in apparent incomprehension when you state your destination; and sometimes they'll even find you canny shortcuts to beat some of the gridlock on the major roads). And he somehow emanated a vibe of dudeness - maybe it was the thick mane of long, silky, silver-grey hair (slightly reminiscent of the recently ousted Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi - although this is not, I think, a comparison that the driver would have found flattering); maybe it was the ample Buddha-belly; maybe it was the sly, playful glint in the corner of his eye; but something about him immediately made me think this guy was OK.

So much so that I got involved in a long bout of SMS exchanges and paid no attention to where we were going at all (you really can't afford to do this with most of the drivers here). I suffered a moment of panic when I looked up and thought that he had turned the wrong way down the main road the bar is on. My skills in the local language are extremely limited. And what usually happens in these situations is that the driver will mirror back your panic to you tenfold (one favourite ploy of theirs is to randomly mention several other parts of the city in quick succession, places which are nowhere near where you want to go, and do not sound anything like the name of the place where you want to go; this rapidly convinces you that he didn't understand the destination you gave him in the first place, and probably wouldn't know where it was anyway, even if you could speak the language perfectly). This guy merely laughed and beamed and tut-tutted, and reassured me (in words and gestures simple enough for me to understand!) that we hadn't yet reached the road I thought we had just turned on to - which I soon found to be quite true. Remarkably laidback of him.

Better was yet to come. The fare on the meter was 25*, and I only had 15 in change. He didn't seem to have change for a 100* bill (or he couldn't be bothered to use up all his change at the start of the evening, more likely), so...... he offered to waive the rest of the fare. Perhaps such gestures of generosity are commonplace on the last day of the Lunar New Year festival.... but I doubt it. I was absolutely flabbergasted! In nearly 5 years here, I have never come across such a thing before.

As it happened, just as I was stepping out of the cab, I remembered I had a big roll of 1* bills in another pocket, so I hastily gave him those - probably rather more than the 10* I owed him, in fact, so it was my turn to force some New Year hospitality on him. I hope it didn't make him feel uncomfortable (they don't have tipping here - for anything).

Someone who's never been here, who hasn't suffered dozens upon dozens of the 'bad taxi experiences', may find this tale hard to appreciate. I know it seems like a very trivial incident; but it cheered me up for the whole of the first half of this week (when almost everything else in my life was cheering me down).

Goodwill - a sponaneous and reciprocal generosity of spirit in everyday transactions - is often thin on the ground in this city. When you find it, it is to be cherished.