Taxiing Hell: The Competition

I try to be a good, environmentally-conscious individual.  I don't drive a Hummer, I don't club baby seals (even that one time a seal was giving me the stink eye), I properly recycle used motor oil, and generally try to ride my bike or take public transportation whenever possible.  Some days are easier than others to be green and tree-friendly, but there are definitely days when you just have to take a cab somewhere.  Like when the AQI tops off at 500+ PM2.5 and the air is burning your lungs or it's freezing cold and you're drunkenly trying to get home after the subway has closed.  Also, some days I'm just really lazy.

Having mastered the ability to direct a cabbie to my apartment (and a few other points of interest) means that I'm no longer intimidated by the prospect of having to communicate with a collective group of people who possess arguably the 'Jingiest accents in this city.  In fact, I somewhat like that about cabbies and will take advantage of any opportunity to throw in a heavy Beijing errrrrr. What I don't like about taking a cab is the lack of self-reliance in terms of getting myself places.  When I ride or drive somewhere I'm more or less traveling on my own terms.  I'm completely in control of when, where, and how I get somewhere, limited only by my legs and the traffic.  If I take a cab, I have to stand on the sidewalk with my arm sticking out like a skanky call girl waiting from some Yuēhàn (that's "John" in pinyin) to pick me up in his nasty car.  And in a city this size getting a taxi can be damn near impossible depending where you are and what you look like.  It's easy to pick up a cab mid-week in the CBD, but you won't have such luck if you're in one of Beijing's bar areas during the weekend trying to get home at 1, 2, or 3am.  Things are made increasingly difficult if you look funny or more specifically if you're white.  ABC's like myself have it relatively good.  Cabbies will pull over for us on the assumption we know Chinese and usually don't figure things out until you stumble over your first syllables.  Unfortunately, you're still competing with a million other Chinese folk on the same street so the competition has the potential to be super fierce.  Rawr! [obligatory]

So what do you do have to do to get in a taxi on these days?  How can you outsmart or outmaneuver the competition?  I try to avoid douchebag moves like throwin' 'bows and poaching someone else's cab as they're trying to get into it.  No, contrary to what you may think, I prefer a more subtle tactic (in this instance at least).  I've identified a key characteristic as the Achilles' heel of the typical taxi rider; something that nearly all of them refuse to do; something that is practically the antithesis of the taxi rider raison d'être.  Walking.  Or really just about any other kind of physical movement.  In their minds, this constitutes as "travel," an act or service that should obviously be provided by the taxi driver.  "Why would I walk have to some place that I am already going to pay someone to drive me to?" I'd imagine a typical cabber would say to himself (in Chinese).  "If I stay here with my arms flapping like some kind of bird-streetwalker hybrid, I'm sure to get a cab and not waste any precious time or energy." As for myself, I think the opposite way.  I seek my taxi advantage in light of their static positioning.  Instead of standing on a corner waiting to get picked up, I'm the kind that puts the "walk" in "streetwalker" and stretch my legs in order to better pick-up a cab.  Sure, I get a little sweaty in the process and would probably make a really ugly whore, but I can get taxis like a champ.  A few of my favorite tactics include walking in concentric circles around a particular block and walking away from a group of waiting cabbers down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of traffic.  That way when an available cab makes his way down the road, I'm the first to wave it down.  Score: Me-1 Lazy Cabber-0.  I've got a few other tips (like jump in the cab shut the door before giving the cabbie directions so he can't refuse to drive you there), but if I gave them all way, I would be adding my entire readership to the list of people I'd have to compete against to get a cab. Yes I realized a grand total of 2.1 people read this thing, but you gotta fight tooth and nail for somethings here and I'm gonna make the most of any advantages I have at my disposal no matter how slim they are.

1000 cabs in this picture.  None of them are going to pick you up.