It’s 6:30am when Wang Zhifeng steps out of his 14th floor 1200 RMB/month apartment in the Haidian district , waving goodbye to his wife as he closes the door behind him and lighting up a Double Happiness cigarette on the way to the elevator, elbowing-grabbing his fruit jar of green tea to do so. Ling, the elevator lady, is already at her chair in the elevator, hard at work knitting a new pair of socks for her niece, the same position she’ll occupy for the next 12 hours pushing the buttons to take people up and down. Even though they’ve lived in the building for years, they exchange no pleasantries, as is their custom, and Wang Zhifeng smokes his cigarette the whole way down. The lights in the hallway still aren’t working and the paint is peeling off the ceiling, but it’s home, and Wang Zhifeng steps out into the daylight and heads to his cab, a shiny new Volkswagen that he rents from one of the many taxi companies in Beijing and splits in 12 hours shifts with his next door neighbor. It’s not cloudy, but there’s a haze of pollution and it’s going to be another long day in Beijing traffic. Nestling his tea jar into the space beside the passenger seat with the emergency brake, he drives for a couple minutes to the end of the street with a stop by the jianbing (an oniony egg crepe around a crunchy fried dough) stand for a quick breakfast. For the next 3 hours, he tackles stop and go traffic driving a businessman to work in Dongdan, an elderly couple to Beijing’s West Train Station, and several minutes just driving around looking for the next fare: Me.

Wang Zhifeng is your typical Beijing taxi driver, and as such, he has no compunction at all about starting right in with the banter. “So where are you from, péngyŏu (朋友)?” “No kidding, I love mĕiguó ( 美国)! Are you a student here in China, or do you work?” In a day of unbroken monotony, a foreign passenger who is able and willing to communicate can sometimes make the difference between a good day and a bad day. It’s an opportunity for you, as the foreigner, to practice your Chinese, represent your country, learn a few things about your host country, and make a friend who’ll undoubtedly give you his or her most honest assessment based on untold hours listening to the car radio.