After a four day escape to Hong Kong (food pictures to come shortly), I gingerly set foot back on Shanghai soil when I stepped out from the automated doors at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport. What followed reminded me again, Oh yeah… I’m on Mainland China…
I get in a smoke-filled taxi. WAH! Three half-inch bugs are scurrying around the floor of the backseat, probably half scared to death of the gigantic intruder on their territory. I literally jump out of my seat, while the driver flashes me a toothy grin.”Come on! Sit here in the front seat, it’s clean!” he says, patting the white cloth seat next to him. I glance around at the “taxi regulator,” who looks over encouragingly. Uhhhh….. okay fine. It’s midnight and my suitcase is already in the trunk. “Hey but driver, just drive as fast as you can, okay? These bugs are scaring the shit out of me.” (Okay not my exact words, but if I knew how to say that in Chinese I definitely would’ve said exactly that)
And then we drive. I’m leaning unnaturally forward, still unsure about these little critters in the back, while I crank the window open in the effort of keeping the bugs from crawling towards my part of the car. After a while, I get a little more comfortable and pop in my iPod headphones. Home is another 45 minutes away, and I can’t take more of this Chinese pop music on the radio.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEP!
“Aiyaaaaa!” The driver sighs angrily. From somewhere deep within the dashboard of the car, an incredibly annoying, high-pitched beeping commences. I try not to pay attention to it, but it permeates the chilled-out Dave Matthews playing in my head. I get ready to ask the driver about this new development, just in time for him to pick up his phone and start yelling Shanghainese to the person on the other end (perhaps he wasn’t yelling, but Chinese tends to make a speaker sound like he/she is yelling, don’t you agree?).
A few minutes later, the Shanghainese yelling stops, and the loud beeping can be heard once again. Just imagine the ticking of a clock, but instead of a tick, you can hear a BEEP every second.
“What is this??!!”
“Oh! Hahaha! Every time I go too fast, this makes noise for 5 minutes. I can’t do anything to make it stop!”
“What?! This is so annoying. Why in the world do you have this thing?”
“Yeah! The company installed one in each car in time for the Expo.”
I glance back at the backseat, wondering if I can stretch out and lean back instead of hunching forward from the bugs. They’re gone!
“Oh, the bugs? They get scared back into the trunk when I drive fast and the wind blows in!”
Welcome back to China.
