Beijing Sounds — 北京的声儿

The average Beijing taxi driver is licking his chops to get a foreigner into the back seat so he can drive him three times around the third ring before delivering him to the overpriced Shangri-la on the premise of having confused it for the Hilton.Right?

That’s the going logic. And there’s no shortage of scams in China [scroll down here for a sampling].

Since my theory is you’re less likely to get scammed if you strike up a conversation, I end up talking to lots of 司机 [drivers] in BJ and elsewhere.
taxi clip
When you talk to taxi drivers in the US you get migration stories — the guy from Eritrea, who came to the US via Toronto, bussed tables in El Paso, then got a cab gig in Chicago.

In Beijing, you get taxicab economics: how he shares the lease with another driver at 6000 a month each, plus gas and repairs, running the cab as close to 24/7 as possible between the two of them (gotta hustle to make money at 10 kuài per ride).

There’s a fringe benefit: authentically colloquial vocabulary. Cab drivers don’t throw you the same questions you get from coworkers accustomed to the vocabulary of lao wai. They give you questions without forethought, sometimes in the polite talking-to-a-stranger-and-not-wanting-to-be-too-direct register, and more often in street-level vernacular. Consequently, you get things like 搞 [gǎo] — which left me in a state of uhh-uhh befuddlement mid-conversation with this cab driver:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

T: gǎo shénme de ya? gǎo jìzhě de ya?
搞什么的呀? 搞记者的呀?
What do you do? Are you a reporter?

Me: méi — méi míngbài nèige yìsi
没–没明白那个意思.
I don’t — don’t understand this meaning
[NB: don't say this if you want to sound like a native speaker. Use 你的意思 instead of 那个意思]

T: gǎo jìzhě de ya, háishì gǎo shénme de ya?
搞记者的呀还是搞什么的呀?
Are you a reporter, or what do you do?

Me: zhèige wènti shì, uh
这个问题是…
This question is…

T: wǒ wènde shì nǐde dìfang huà shuōde tǐng hǎo, zài guó nèi gǎo shénme ne?
我问得是你的地方话说得挺好, 在国内搞什么呢?
I’m asking [because] you speak with a local accent — what are you doing in China?

Me: a, zhèige -uh- zài guónèi zài – zài zhì – shì wǒ zuò shénme gōngzuòde nèige [yìsi]
啊,这个 – - – 在国内 – - – 在 – 在这儿 – - – 是我做什么工作的那个意思.
Oh, here, uh, here in the country, here — you’re asking what kind of work I do?

T: OK!

I left in the embarrassing uh-uh-uhhhs to convey that uncomfortable feeling you get when you know you’re missing a really simple question. The uh-uh comes out as you struggle to choose between guessing what the question was, and asking for clarification. The risk of guessing is, of course, that you’ll get it wrong and answer “I have a five-year-old daughter” when he asked what you do for a living. And if you get it right, you look brilliant — even if you know you’re a phony.

In this instance I asked for clarification, and where some drivers would have clammed up, my driver kept going until I got it right. It was a struggle and we’re rewarded at the end with the classic Chinese OK, which doesn’t mean what it means in English, unless you say it with the enthusiasm that this driver did after finally getting through to his thick-skulled passenger.

But back to the great fraud: does speaking Chinese reduce your risk of getting scammed?

Maybe it reduces the cost of the scam…
There was the 司机 who picked up my Chinese-speaking but blue-eyed American coworker from PEK airport, told her the trip was going to cost 400rmb (should be about a hundred and she knew that), refused to turn on the meter as she argued with him, and finally delivered her to the hotel after she’d given up on her jet-lagged negotiating at 180rmb.

So there are taxi frauds, no doubt. But I’ll go on record as arguing that, on balance, the losers are fewer than the good guys among Beijing taxi drivers.

A few weeks ago on school-opening ceremony day, there was the 司机 whose cab drove away with my daughter’s backpack in the back seat as we were all in a tizzy about getting oriented around the festivities. Fortunately we had grabbed a receipt with a phone number. We called the main office, which almost immediately got us to the 司机’s cell phone. He was already a good distance away and headed farther out on a call, but he said he’d finish that and get back in 30 minutes. He showed up on time, and we were going to give him 50 for the 15rmb ride home — it only seemed fair. But when we arrived at our apartment he not only charged us the same 15rmb we’d paid on the way over, he refused any sort of tip, adamantly, on the grounds that he always delivers lost items to customers. Part of the job, he says.

And there’s more: A few weeks before that, there was also the 司机 who had the misfortune of picking up my wife with no wallet. She didn’t make that discovery until they arrived at the subway station, of course, at which time the 司机 not only gave her a phone number to call later so she could pay, but also loaned her 5rmb to take for the subway (an extra 2rmb over the fare, “just in case”).

Here’s the fraud: the lao wai who’s been in China six months, doesn’t speak a nihao of Chinese, gets into a cab with directions to an obscure office building on the other side of town, gets upset when the driver doesn’t understand the English name of the building he keeps yelling from the backseat, then spends the next six months wisely pontificating to his visitors about how Chinese drivers don’t know the city and will drive you halfway to Tianjin just to jack up the fare.