In Beijing, nothing is as certain as death and taxis. The city is home to 66,000 licensed cabs, five times more than New York City, and you can barely raise your arm without a liveried chariot halting at your feet.

Like the day my wife and I had to make a pre-dawn airport run. We were worried about finding a taxi in our remote corner of Beijing at that hour, so we reserved one by phone. It was outside our door as promised – along with a parade of others cruising for customers, evidently having seen the lights go on in our high-rise apartment. I have never had to wait more than a few minutes to hail a taxi, and I nearly always get to my destination with only minimal instructions to the driver (who, to get a license, must be a longtime Beijing resident).

Best of all, Beijing taxis are cheap. With the 29th Olympiad approaching, local authorities decreed that all taxis must have electronic meters that print receipts and, for the first time, that all meters march to a consistent tune. The flag-fall is now a standard 10 yuan (about $1.40 at the current exchange rate of 7 yuan to the dollar), and it progresses from there very slowly. It’s hard to spend $5 getting to most in-town destinations. From the distant Capital International airport to nearly any major hotel is about $14. Tips? Forget it, Comrade, we’re all equal in the People’s Republic. I’ve had drivers politely decline a gratuity.

Beijing visitors should expect to log a lot of taxi time, most of it well-spent. You can see more of the city in a taxi than on foot or on the efficient but often crowded subway. And a taxi ride is your best way of coming into contact with a disappearing species: Beijing’s earthy, good-humored working class. You can tell a true Beijinger by the throaty way he (nearly all drivers are men) turns the “–en” endings of words to “–er.” If you can convince a driver that you know some Chinese (a few words from a phrasebook will do), sit back and enjoy stentorian commentary on traffic, weather and life.

You will also experience manic, horn-smashing, lane-changing evasive maneuvers not seen since Smokey met the Bandit. You can’t get thrills like this anywhere for a $1.40 flag-fall. Helping drive Beijing taxi drivers to road rage are two Olympics-inspired rules: 1) don’t smoke while at the wheel, and 2) change your cotton seat-covers daily. These make for clean
cabs, though the prescribed seat-covers don’t always have openings for seat-belts. So I compliment my driver’s death-cheating moves while gripping the front-seat headrest. Chinese passengers – who, in egalitarian fashion, typically ride up front next to the driver – disdain seat-belts.

Fortunately, there are 3 million other vehicles on Beijing’s roads, so this full-metal ballet rarely takes place at more than 25 mph, even on expressways. Serious accidents seem unlikely at that speed, and I have never encountered one. I know it is folly to think this way. But in a cheap, clean, slow-moving Beijing taxi, nothing seems as remote as death in
traffic.

http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/travel/globespotters/?p=430