I took a taxi to work this morning, always a mistake. In this case because I’m pretty sure my driver was hammered. Now I know we expats like to make our little jokes about how some taxi drivers in Beijing like to get a little lubed before heading out to work, and certainly anyone who has had lunch (or breakfast) at a restaurant frequented by cabbies has witnessed the distrubingly high liquid/food ratio, but I never had the personal pleasure of watching a cabbie squint his way down the Second Ring Road at high speed. At first, when he tried to light a cigarette, had trouble with the radio, and was driving 8 miles an hour on an open Dongzhimen Nei, I thought he was simply sleepy…these guys do put in long hours.
Why didn’t I just bail? Well, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, everytime I thought my life was truly in danger he’d rally and we’d have 10-15 minutes of uneventful driving before he would feel I was too bored and so spice up the trip with events like “Swerve into oncoming bus” and “narrowly miss bicyclist.”
I was still in the middle of the sleepy/sloshed debate when I thanked him and he looked at me with half-closed eyes (for a moment I thought he was going to try and kiss me) and said:
“Boo kessshhhhiii.”
Thus endeth the debate.
