Moving lessons on life, politics and 'porcelain'
Raymond Zhou China Daily  Updated: 2005-11-05 06:22

Those of you who drive your cars or take public transport in Beijing don't know what you're missing. You're missing one of the city's top 10 attractions and an intangible cultural heritage that costs little.

Of course, nobody has conferred the title on Beijing's taxi drivers, but I would like to nominate them if such a category existed.

Taxi drivers in China's capital city are in a league of their own. I'm not talking about their driving skills or their knowledge of the city's roads, which doesn't seem to require more than one day's familiarizing. It is the rich mix of news and views that they offer, at no extra charge, that makes them stand out and add such joie de vivre to this metropolis.

True, New York has equally garrulous taxi drivers, but they tend to be new arrivals from one region - South Asia - at least when I was there 10 years ago, that may limit areas of interest for conversation.

Beijing taxi drivers are not only willing - at the slightest prompting - to open their chatterbox, but offer a spectrum of topics wider than some universities' curricula. They range from international politics to the latest gossip on the street. On a recent ride, I was given a lesson in linguistics, specifically, on the origin and connotation of "peng ci'er," literally meaning "to touch porcelain."

It refers to a form of petty extortion when some pedestrian deliberately walks into a car, usually one that has stopped at a traffic light, and pretends to be hit by it, thus claiming injury. The driver, unclear about his or her own culpability and eager to avoid making a scene, usually has to shell out several hundred yuan as settlement.

Now, no professor or dictionary could have taught me that. Besides, it gave me a glimpse of the shifting relationship between drivers and pedestrians in this city. A decade or two ago, when personal vehicles were far and few between, it would have been unimaginable for a pedestrian to come up with such a scheme.

I jokingly call Beijing taxi drivers "my news agency on wheels." The information that I get on each ride is surely not edited by professional newsmen, but refracted through the prism of personal observation and imagination, or, shall I borrow a Hollywood term, re-imagining. It is somewhat like Van Gogh's rendition of sunflowers - distinctive, whimsical and never boring.

If a topic is hot or controversial, you would get so many different interpretations that will set your mind in a spin. Early this year, I quizzed a dozen drivers on their takes on Sino-Japanese relations, and guess what? It was neither emotional nor rational. There were arguments that no foreign relations expert could have anticipated.

I always wonder why taxi drivers are inclined towards conspiracy theories. Somehow, they can connect the dots that are invisible to most of us and make the farfetched sound plausible. But they do give me pause for second thought.

I once met an elderly driver who gave me a scathing review of what he went through in the old days when Big Brother was running amok. I tantalized, "Back then, if you had told me this and I had reported it to your employer, you'd be in big trouble." He kept silent, and then said, "Times have changed and now I can confide in a stranger without fear."

Here's my taxi interview routine: as soon as I'm snugly in the back seat, I'd go, "Hey, shifu (usually translated as "master" but more like a respectful "sir"), what's new in this town?" as if I'm fresh off the boat or train. And he'd - it's usually a he - delve right to the top story in the most journalistically correct way, never wasting time on sugar-coating generalities. The language is not something The New York Times would accept, but something Hollywood scriptwriters would die for.

I would refrain from giving him my employer's address as the destination. Instead, I'd mention the school across the street or even a nearby restaurant. Maybe, subconsciously, I do not want him to know I'm a journalist. Maybe I'm afraid the revelation might embarrass him, or maybe I'm the one who's a little ashamed.

raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/05/2005 page4)