Comment

Show about foreign taxi driver sure to be winner

By Steve Hubrecht (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-22 07:50

Sometimes, what seem to be the strangest ideas turn out to be the most brilliant. Dutchman Perry Knoppert has clearly hit on one such idea. His plan, as reported last week, is to get behind the wheel of a Beijing taxi for two hours a day for the next two months, despite his self-professed halting Chinese language skills and limited knowledge of the city. Then he will film his interactions with passengers using six cameras and then use the results to make an online show.

Odd idea? Sure seems like it at first glance. And it'll involve no small amount of effort and time.

But if you think about it some more you start to realize there will definitely be plenty of funny moments, possible some angry ones and perhaps even a few insightful ones. It certainly has the potential to be quite a watchable show.

The best part about Knoppert's plan is that it will take a classic cross-cultural Beijing scene - a newcomer and a local in a taxi - and reverses the roles.

In the normal scene, a newcomer climbing into a Beijing taxi is bound to run smack into the cultural wall that exists between local Beijingers and those from elsewhere.

The further away from Beijing the newcomer comes from, the thicker this wall will be. A complete communication barrier is common in these situations. Annoyance, possibly to the point of frustration, ensues, but usually so does a moment of levity.

And once this moment occurs, the cross-cultural wall is breached, at least some small way. The newcomer and local driver seem to reach some kind of unspoken realization that although they can't, in a technical sense, understand each other, they can still, in a general sense, communicate with each other.

It's not uncommon for a local Beijing taxi driver and a newcomer from outside China to pass a taxi ride sharing minor jokes, making comments on their surroundings or even telling whole stories, despite not sharing a language. They may not get the finer details (or really any details at all), but somehow they understand the gist of what the other is trying to say.

It's amazing how much can be communicated without a mutually understood language. Facial expressions, pointing, grunting, pantomiming and tone of voice can all be used to great effect to convey meaning.

Much of the credit for these interactions goes to Beijing's taxi drivers. Sometimes, they are irritable grouches, cussing out everything in sight, but that's somewhat understandable if you spend 12 hours in a row driving on the capital's chaotic roads. They are far more often jovial and kind, quick with a chuckle, and although not wildly enamored with their profession, they are good natured enough to brush off its rigors with a wry grin and a slurp from their ever-ready jars of green tea.

It makes sense that if a taxi driver is even-tempered enough to deal with Beijing's clogged streets and the irregular on-road behavior of the city's other drivers, that he - or occasionally she - is also able to take a barely comprehensible passenger in stride.

When words fail, you need to take an extra step and use basic human understanding to communicate and the capital's taxi drivers are masters at this. They are often the door through which newcomers get their first glimpse of Beijing culture. And in so being, they are a real credit to the city.

It will be interesting to watch Knoppert's stunt unfold and see how the cross-cultural wall is breached (or not breached) with the newcomer behind the wheel and the local Beijinger riding shotgun.

That Knoppert came up with his idea in the first place seems to suggest he already has a keen understanding of the quintessential Beijing-ness of taxi drivers. So it's not hard to picture him swigging his green tea and engaging in mutually unintelligible conversations with his passengers.