Ride 'Em, Cowboy!

I've had some amazing experiences in Beijing taxis--I've been ripped off, lied to, treated with the greatest of courtesy and respect, had lunches shared, directions given, advice sought: I've been serenaded, and once was almost driven off a freeway by a driver who was too busy showing me pictures of his Chihuahua on his cell phone to bother to steer. (The screams of terror from the four white guys in the back of the taxi make me chuckle to this day.) Oh, yes, I was abducted once, but since I didn't report it (long story why, including a dead cell phone and a TV show) I won't go into details here. After almost 20 years of taking taxis, I had a first: all I can say to sum it up is "Cowboy."

It's almost impossible to get a taxi from the front of Job Number One: taxis barrel by frequently but they are driven by off-duty drivers on their way home for lunch. I was trying frantically to get a taxi and had been flagging them down and begging them to Take Me To The City for a good twenty minutes while a group of san lun che men sat on their bikes and chuckled at my efforts. San Lun Che are those three-wheeled taxi cabs which are a combination of bike and godawful motor: think of a rickshaw peddled by a bike with the additional va-voom of a coal-burning engine (ok, maybe not coal, but you get the idea). These guys are usually pretty tough customers--some are chatty, most are cheerful, and all would love nothing better than to see some overprivileged fat cat--ie, me--fall flat on their face. So, after providing them with fodder for chatter and gossip, I was starting to get a little testy. I understand Chinese pretty well, including the local dialect, and their comments were not always kind. Finally one came forward and explained to Little Missy here that no one was going to stop but he could drive me down the street to a place near the subway station where I was sure to find a cab. I said the hell with it and jumped in the back of his san lu che, one whose cardboard floor actually boasted a Hello Kitty floor mat.  Off we went: we had gone a few hundred meters when the real experience began.

 We were on the extreme right hand side of the road: the inside lane had faster-moving traffic. A taxi shot past us on the left:  my driver's head snapped up and he gave a shout not unlike the Master riding to hounds: tally-ho! And he was off: he tripled his speed and tried to get the attention of the taxi which was now up ahead of us and to our left about ten meters. His feet pedaled furiously as his hands gripped the controls and fed more diesel or kerosene or fuel to the smoking straining engine. We gained on the taxi slightly: then our driver took out what appeared to be a small rope and started lashing out at the taxi with it, exactly like a cowboy roping a doggie.  I had interned in Cowboy Country and had seen students mutton busting, roping steers, and riding the broncs. This was far more exciting, especially as I was the recipient of my cowboy's skill in separating the taxi from the other cars, shouting it into the lane in front of us, and persuading the driver to pull over to the right side of the road so I could mount, so to speak.

I was laughing too hard to discuss the fee: I handed the driver about 20 kuai (generous) and thanked him for his courtesy and kind help. The taxi driver grunted as I got in: I asked him if he was often accosted in that manner and he shrugged. "Who cares," he said, "As long as I get the fare."