you used to be alright

conversations with cab drivers, part II

i had played golf and then polished off another meal at boxing cat brewery here in shanghai.

heading back home, i caught a self-owned AX cab.

cabbie: “how long are you going to be wearing those shorts?”

me: “er. . . what?”

cabbie: “shorts. are you going to be wearing them for another month? i think it will get cold”

me: “um, i just look at the weather and see what’s comfortable. i don’t check the calendar when wearing clothes – if it’s hot outside, i’ll wear shorts, if it’s not, i’ll wear pants.”

cabbie: “oh, interesting. now that it’s almost october, i don’t wear shorts, but when its hot, i just pull up my trousers” which he then demonstrates by pulling his pants above his knee

me: “*” – i’m trying to find something interesting on my blackberry to read

cabbie: “say do you play a lot of sports?”

i was really afraid this was going to lead into “joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”

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.