Hey that’s my cab!

I’m still trying to figure out this town and its nuances. I had a couple of experiences when we first moved here that totally blew my mind. Both happened in the first weeks that I started working.

I wouldn’t dare attempt to drive in this town. Number one, I don’t think I could afford a car here but even if I could it’s the rules of the road that scare the living daylights out of me….there are no rules, at least none that I can make any sense of. Cars, buses and people just go wherever and somehow it all works out. That being said I’m one of the millions of people trying to flag cabs down in the middle of rush hour. Catching a cab in the middle of rush hour on a cold rainy Friday night is almost impossible. When you are fortunate to see the Holy Grail (an empty cab) on a Friday night (or any night during rush hour) you make you mad dash for it…literally! Well, this is something that I didn’t know.

It was Friday my first week at work. It wasn’t raining but it was cold. By chance I walked up to the corner of Huaihai Zhong Lu and Longmen Lu where I had been lucky to catch cabs my first 2 days. Low and behold, a cab pulls up to drop a patron off. I think to myself “what’s everyone talking about, it’s not that bad trying to hail a cab on Friday night”. So I casually walk up to the passenger side door patiently waiting for the patron to pay and get his change back. I have my hand on the door latch so I could open it, let him out and step into the cab myself. At the corner of my eye, I see a man running towards my cab. Mind you, I’m standing next to the cab with my hand on the door so I know he sees me. He knows that I have this cab. By now the patron of the cab is opening the door and I’m helping him and yet the other man is now in full sprint towards the cab. The patron steps out and as he does the other man reaches “my” cab and goes for the shotgun seat door...gets in and slams the car door shut ...."POOF", the cab takes off! I’m standing there with my hand in front of me still in mid action of holding the door thinking to myself “what the F**k just happened….about 5 seconds later I go…”Hey! That was my cab damn it!

Another time I couldn’t catch a cab so I decided to take a bus. Yup that’s right, me, LA resident in a local Shanghainese bus. Who would have thunk it. So after putting my time in on the streets trying to hail a cab I said to myself I’m either walking home or catching a bus. So I walk over to Pu an Road where the bus stop is. Well, another thing I learned is how to line up for a bus in Shanghai. You can get in the back of the line like a normal person would in a civilized society or you can line up right in front of the first person in line facing him. If you pick the latter the proper protocol is you wait for everyone from the legitimate line to get in first then you go in (yeah I don’t get it either. Wouldn’t it just make sense to get in the back of the line…whatever). At any rate, the bus was loading up and I had just made it in time. The first line had just gone in and the second line was pushing its way through. Anyway, there were a couple of older ladies caught in the mix so I decided to use my body to shield them from the rest of the pushy crowd so they could get in safely. As I did this, they got in and so did some other punk asses that shoved their way through. Now it was my turn to get on but because the bus was now full, the door shut right in front of me and the bus took off ….”Hey that was my bus damn it!”….

Another interesting incident occurred another day when I decided to take the bus home. I was early this time getting on the bus so I was able to get a good seat. 5 minutes later the bus was packed. Standing next to me was a pregnant lady and her son who was about 5 or 6 years old. As any other gentlemen would do in a civilized society I got up and offered her my seat. As I was standing next to my empty seat trying to explain to her in English (which she obviously didn’t understand and was puzzled why I was giving up my seat), Some jerk off starts shoving his way through the crowded bus and sits his ass on my chair. I looked at him and tried explaining to him (in English again…hey, it was my first 2 weeks here, what do you expect) that the seat was for the pregnant lady. He just looked at me an ignored me. Then I tried the “signing” thing, you know …” seat for her…big belly…etc….” All I get back is a blank stare. Then I lose it, grab his shirt and started pulling on him and saying “for her…seat not for you… seat for her you idiot”. I don’t think he got the idiot part but he finally stood his ass up and let the lady have the seat.

Because of all these types of incidents, I’ve been spending a lot of time watching people and how they react. China and more specifically Shanghai is an amazing case study on the collision of the East and West. As one friend put it China is an old beautiful culture that has lost her “Delicate sense of History”. This concept of a “delicate sense of history” is something that I have been thinking a lot about recently.