The atrocious taxi-drivers of Beijing. 'Tiananmen Square? Never 'eard of it, guv'

I normally like taxi drivers. Some of my best friends, etc. But Beijing is a new and terrible world.

Driving a taxi here has never enjoyed a lot of cachet. Back in the 1980s, driving was itself considered an honourable profession; there was no such thing as a private car, and thus the only driving licences belonged to those who did it for a living. Driving taxis was what you did when you had more or less fallen through the cracks of the official system, just as many civilian aircraft were piloted by Air Force throwouts, with predictable results. The cars were not exactly of the highest quality; the cheapest and most popular were cuboid yellow vans, built out of the waste material at the Harbin No 1 Aircraft Factory, and known as “bread wagons”. These were driven by grizzled, chain-smoking provincials, dispensing the usual cabbies’ salty wisdom in impenetrable accents.

Qualifications have never been hard to obtain. Ten years ago – I don’t know how much has changed since, but I suspect not a lot – the Chinese driving test consisted of driving to and fro across a piece of waste ground, usually in groups of eight or ten, so one didn’t have a lot of personal scope to disqualify oneself. The alternative method of obtaining a licence was a small brown envelope, possibly accompanied by a bottle of Black Label, handed to the director of the driving school. Either way, not exactly a recipe for high standards. And there is certainly no established procedure for would-be cab-drivers comparable to our “doing the knowledge”. In fact, I’ve always fantasised about Beijing drivers sitting an exam called “doing the ignorance:

“Do you know the way to Tiananmen Square?”

“Never ‘eard of it, guv.”

“Main Railway Station?”

“Isn’t that sort of out West somewhere?” (It isn’t.)

“Forbidden City?”

“Not a clue, guv. Is that one of those new developments that’ve just gone up?”

On Saturday night I had dinner with friends in the far west of town. I left early enough to get the last tube home, as the line closes around 11 p.m. Well, so I thought. The station was a mile or so away, so I took a cab. I was a bit bemused at the way he was taking me, but I thought (why?) he presumably knew what was what. Finally, after ten minutes or so, he stopped the car and told me he hadn’t the faintest idea where the station was, and that I’d better find someone else. (An underground station a mile away from his rank!) I didn’t have a clue where I was either, except that it seemed a distinctly unprepossessing place to pick up taxis: what I did know what that I had now indisputably missed the last tube.

And there are no greater experts on missing the right exit, suddenly finding they can’t turn left when intended, getting the one-way system wrong, etc etc. They will also make a bee-line for any Gordian traffic snarl-up (this isn’t hard) and embroil you in it for hours. Take a good book, because you won’t be going ahywhere any time soon. But don’t get too engrossed, because you’ll have to be alert when the traffic clears to ensure you don’t end up in Mongolia. If there is one area in which a great big Maoist purge is called for…