I’ve been spending a lot of time in Hangzhou with my friends. While I sometimes spend the night at one of their houses, I usually prefer to take a taxi back home. Hangzhou is a 45-minute drive from my school and there are always local taxi’s waiting in the city to bring late night travelers, like myself, home.

It’s something I don’t put a lot of thought into, but I slowly realized, over the past few months, the ride home has become more and more enjoyable. It’s usually always late, the roads are empty, the sky is dark and while I’m sleepy (and probably a little drunk) I’m not going to fall asleep, so me and the driver usually talk. Sometimes we talk the whole way back, sometimes we chat just a little, but I’ve never had an unpleasant ride home and it’s becoming a perfect way to end the night.

The drivers, never one to miss out on a buck, don’t want to drive just one person back. So they make you wait as long as necessary for another person to arrive. Or, if you get tired of that you can pay almost double to leave right away. Something I learned the hard way.

One night, around 2am, I got into the taxi.

“Da Xi Men,” I told the driver, meaning the gate of my school.

“Haode,” he replied. “Deng yi xia.” Ok, wait a moment. 

Sure, sure, I said thinking that we needed to wait for someone on the way or something. No problem. His wife (who had a feathered hairstyle that would make any White Snake fan jealous) was in the front seat playing with an ipad. She was playing Fruit Ninja and I laughed and said I liked that game. I flopped down in the back seat and took out my own phone to pass the few minutes we were waiting.

10 minutes goes by, then 15.

“Are we going to go soon?” I finally asked.

“Deng yi xia,” he replied. Wait a minute.

20 minutes, then 25 minutes goes by and finally,

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

“Another customer,” he replied.

“Another customer?! But it’s almost 2:30 am I don’t think anyone else is coming!”

“Someone will come eventually,” he said soothingly. “Just go to sleep, I’ll wake you when someone else comes.”

Go to sleep in the back of a taxi at a sketchy bus station at 2:30 in the morning?! Err, no thanks.

Another 5 minutes goes by.

“I’d really like to leave now. Can we go?” I ask.

“Well, we can go if you pay me 100 rmb.” Normally the price is 60 rmb ($10) per person. 100 rmb is almost double, but for an almost hour long taxi ride I consider even that a bargain. Why hadn’t he said so earlier?!

Since that ride I have always asked the driver if we could go now if I pay more money. Some drivers are really funny. Because I’m a foreigner, they want to double and triple check I understand.

“If we go now, it’s 100rmb,” one driver told me in slow, careful Mandarin.

“Okay,” I said quickly. “Let’s go!”

“I want to make sure you understand. It’s 100rmb,” he said again slowly.

“I pay you 100rmb, we go right now,” I repeated in equally slow and careful mandarin.

“Right!” he said laughing and starting the car.

Another time, I had the opposite experience.

“One person is 60rmb,” the driver started telling me as I approached the taxi. “But we have to wait for another customer. If you want to go now…”

“It’s 100rmb. Yes, I know, let’s go now.” I said interrupting him and getting into the car without missing a beat.

There are usually a few local taxi’s waiting around and as a result I end up chit chatting with all the drivers for a few minutes before we go. The other night I met a duo I can only describe as the Chinese Waldorph and Statler. They weren’t grumpy, but they were this funny team kind of finishing each others sentences and laughing at each others jokes.

“You Ukranian?” They asked me. A common mistake as my school has about 60 Ukranian students and with my pale skin and blond hair we look alike.

“No!” I said with mock shock. “I’m American.”

“Good,” they said. “We don’t like those Ukranian’s. They’re bad guys!” Some of the Ukranian boys actually beat up a taxi driver in my city. As it is a small city word spread very quickly and even now my British co-worker has trouble sometimes when he tries to get a taxi because they believe he is a Ukranian and don’t want to deal with him.

“Where are you coming from?” They asked. “A bar?”

“Of course!” I said, “It’s 3am on a friday night. Where do you think I’m coming from?”

They laughed. “Actually it’s 3am on Saturday morning,” one helpfully pointed out.

In the taxi me and the driver usually talk. The chit chat always begins pretty predictably. Where are you from? What do you teach? how much money do you make? Lin’an taxi drivers are the only taxi drivers I’ve talked to who are not impressed with my salary. They are incredibly corrupt, never ever using the meter, and are masters at squeezing as many customers into a car at once and making a quick buck. In fact, almost every late night driver has an iphone. Not just any iphone, an iPhone 5. Something I certainly cant afford.

I ask about their lives, their age (shockingly many are close to my age yet look much older) and their family. I’ve listened to proud dads talk about their kids who just entered college, or they tell me that their primary school kid got a good grade in english.

Once, only once, I had a female driver. “It’s cool to have a female driver. I usually only see guys. You’re a modern woman!” I said.

“En,” she grunted back (a chinese kind of catch-all noise) then turned up the music, clearly not interested in chatting.

Sometimes I go to Hangzhou with some Lin’an friends so we taxi back together. Once me and my friend Becca went. Becca can speak Chinese so it’s especially fun to go with her because I don’t have to translate.

One night, very late, we were heading back with another guy in the cab. Becca, who was on the slightly drunk side, had wanted to some baozi, or dumplings, and she got me some too. It was nice, but I was not interested in eating them. I was sitting in the front seat, she was in the back with the other guy.

“Here, take your baozi!” she said holding up the bag.

“I don’t want them,” I said. “You eat them.”

“I don’t want them either,” she said. Then she turned to the guy in the back seat. “Ni yao baozi ma?” Do you want baozi? He laughed and said no. So she stuck her head between the front seat, dangling the bag out in front of her and said to the driver, “Ni yao baozi ma?” He also didn’t want them.

“Is your friend drunk?” the driver whispered to me.

The four of us were talking on the way back and we discovered the guy was going to Lin’an just for the day.

“Do you live there?” Becca asked.

“No,” he said.

“Do you work there?”

“No.”

“Do you have friends?”

“No.”

“Then why are you going?” she asked.

“Wo you shi,” he replied. I have something to do.

Then in English she said to me, “I think he’s mafia.”

I laughed and asked why.

“He’s wearing a really expensive suit, has some nice jewelry and is going to Lin’an at 4am because he ‘has stuff to do?’ That seems really suspicious.” She had a point.

They asked our age and we told them to guess. Unfortunately they guessed that Becca, who is 14 years younger than me, was 30 and I was 25. I laughed liked crazy while Becca got (mockingly) mad at them. They asked us pretty early on in the ride, so throughout the rest of the trip she kept bringing it up. At one point, while Becca was talking to the guy in the back seat, the driver leaned over to me and said, “Is your friend mad because we thought she was older?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m happy so it’s okay.” He laughed.

Talking to taxi drivers is one of my favorite ways to practice my Chinese. Usually they are local people, which means thick, hard to understand accents, but they deal with a lot of different people everyday and most are quite chatty by nature. So it’s helpful and passes the time. I mean, if I’m getting ripped off I might as well get some free practice out of them while I’m at it!

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