Aug/090
taxi conversations, part i
usually when i take cabs in shanghai, if they’re of any length, i end up having one of 4 different conversations with the cabbie.
1. what its like to be chinese american?
2. what its like to be from hong kong? (i vary my origins depending on . . .well, actually depending on nothing. very random.)
3. how is it that i’m used to living in shanghai
4. other stuff (the nba, the olympics, the expo, etc.)
this evening when i was coming home from dinner at lost heaven we drove past a roadblock on huaihai lu (near donghu lu) – and i asked the cab driver if huaihai was closed. (it wasn’t) this was apparently enough to start the cabbie on a 15 minute rant about the chinese government’s change from caring about people and public safety to only caring about money. he spent a long time talking about the minhang building collapse, wasting money on the olympics and the expo, sichuan earthquake corruption and the lack of concern over public safety.
all from one road repair. he did mention the road was poorly built because someone was profiting and that’s why they were rebuilding it.
it is lazy journalism to quote your cab driver, but at least for one night, i got a good lesson on general dissatisfaction with local government in shanghai.