(101 Things About Shanghai) Taxis

Taxis in Shanghai aren’t actually particularly nifty but they are remarkably cheap and easy to get around in. A half hour trip from deepest, darkest Pudong to Puxi, with bags and bags of illicit espresso in tow and no desire to take the Metro? 30 yuan max!  A half hour trip out to the Other University (about an hour by the fastest Metro)? About 25-29 yuan! Too lazy to carry your bags home from the grocery store? 12 yuan! In Vancouver, the starting fare for anything is about 36 yuan. Think about it.

And half the time you even get that absurd touch screen television in the back of the front seat head rest to watch while you’re whiling away your time in traffic (or trying not to think about your imminent death on the elevated ring roads). I love the Expo 2010 screen, with the Featured Countries and their Special Foods and Special Music.  Did you know that fiddle music was Canada’s main source of dance music in rural areas until very recently? Yes! I first heard about John Legend in the back of a taxi (and promptly never heard of him again but, hey, I hear he’s famous somewhere). I learned that Krispy Kreme Donuts opened in Shanghai recently thanks to the taxi television.

And you know the niftiest thing about Shanghai taxis? They’re generally NOT assholes. Unlike Beijing, where we were constantly being taken on wrong, roundabout scammy trips where the drivers kept trying to squeeze more money out of the meter, or Nanjing where we’ve had to wait 30 minutes in a queue for a taxi or an hour on the street for a taxi that would actually stop for us (we ended up having to hijack one), or Jakarta where they still wanted to change 100 times the going rate in spite of the presence of a meter, or Cairo where the taxis were barely held together with sticky tape and rust.