China, Please, and Step on It!
There are so many taxis crawling this city like raccoons looking for garbage cans to tip over, it’s pretty easy to catch a ride. If, for whatever reason, you can’t hail a cab, though, or you just have an abnormal fear or dislike towards licensed taxi drivers, you can always fall back on something even more scary and unlikable. There’s this secondary taxi “service” that runs rampant in China. Maybe it’s a little underground, a little entrepreneurial, but it’s just as big of a business, because these guys are everywhere.
Some of them ride motorcycles, others silver vans, and the rest small, dangerous things that are barely classifiable as vehicles since they look like they were just slapped together in a junkyard. But they all look the same, so they’re obviously coming from a single source. And you can find one just as easily as a real taxi. It makes me wonder if there is really such a demand for this kind of transportation? I don’t see a lot of people using them, and yet they’ll congregate in large groups outside the supermarket or the school or the bus stop, gladly getting in everyone’s way:
That picture is a rather tame afternoon. Come night, the number of motorcycles will double, and the supermarket starts looking like its under siege as all the entrances get blocked by them. Would you people just go away, already!
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Responses to “China, Please, and Step on It!”
Comments RSS Feed – All CommentsPollytorg — 23 December 2008 @ 6:04 am
So have you ridden the motorcycle taxi? How does the cost compare to taking the bus, weighing the safety factor in?
Dallas — 23 December 2008 @ 3:10 pm
No, no, without weighing in the safety factor.
Graham — 23 December 2008 @ 6:57 pm
haha the private cars and motorcycles can be a cheap - if shady - way of getting around. You can usually talk them below the going taxi rate. Just make sure you know exactly where it is you want to go…half of the time the drivers are actually from out of town have no idea where anything is. Of course they’ll pretend to know until you’re around 10 mins in. They’ll also try and ask you for more money than you negotiated for once they stop, but as long as you’ve agreed to the price beforehand, stick to it.
Clark — 23 December 2008 @ 10:57 pm
When I was teaching in Anhui province, I would use things like this a lot, but here, I try to avoid them mostly because I find them so annoying.
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