Losing my composure

A series of interesting encounters with strangers in bars kept me out rather late last night. When I finally set out for home, I was so tired that I decided to treat myself to a cab (19 times out of 20 I will walk back, because it's only a little over a mile from my apartment to my favoured watering-holes).

It turned out to be not so much of a treat.

"Turn right here," I said.

"Right?" said the cabbie disbelievingly, and acting like he was somehow terribly disappointed that he couldn't go straight on.

Now, Beijing cab drivers will almost invariably repeat the address and/or instructions you give them two or three times, as if seeking confirmation. They're usually not. A gruff dui, "That's right", will get them on their way more effectively than a foolhardy attempt to repeat or elaborate what you've just said. (This seems to be very much a Beijing quirk. I haven't found taxi drivers anywhere else in the country doing this.)

With this guy last night, though, his reluctance to actually do what I told him amounted to a psychosis. At the next junction, he made to turn left - despite having just been told to turn right, and acknowledged as much. At the next lights we needed to do a U-turn. He set off in the right-hand lane - and then made a big fuss about the difficulty of pulling over to the inside lane, even though at 3.30am there was no other traffic anywhere in sight. Even then, he failed to execute the required U-turn, claiming it was "impossible", and waiting instead for the traffic light to allow him to make a left into Gulouwai. While we were waiting - for what seemed like several minutes - another cab squeezed up inside us and made a U-turn. I found that rather galling. I indicated the ease and legality of the supposedly "impossible" manoeuvre to my driver, but he still didn't want to attempt it. However - perhaps to prove to me that a U-turn was within his repertoire of driving skills - he started to perform one at the next junction where I asked him to turn left. More amazing even than that, even when I'd put him right and got him pointed in the right direction, he again tried to show off his U-turn as we were entering my road.

My "taxi driver Chinese" is perfectly adequate, and I almost never encounter any difficulties telling people where I want to go. And it is difficult to conceive of any possible misunderstanding that would prompt someone to attempt a U-turn in the middle of the entrance to a narrow side street.

This guy only had to make 5 or 6 turns in the space of a 5-minute ride; and at every single one of them, he tried to turn the wrong way. Every single bloody one! I gave up trying to give him verbal instructions, and just pointed the way vigorously. By the end of the ride, I'm afraid, my patience and calm had all evaporated - it was not quite a Christian Bale moment, but getting there.

I am usually very tolerant of the foibles and failings of our cab drivers. It's a tough job. He was probably knackered.... half asleep.... maybe even a little drunk (you do quite often see cab drivers taking an extended meal break in the wee small hours of the morning, and fairly freely partaking of beer and erguotou; Jeremiah reported a particularly alarming cab driver experience the other day). But this chap was being so bizarrely, creatively incompetent that I couldn't help thinking he was deliberately pissing me around.