We’re currently sitting in Beijing’s second airport, Nanyuan, which is located in the south of Beijing proper. Unlike the premiere airport, this second class citizen – a former air force base – has all the charm of a brick to the head, with a brusque and even unapologetic attitude from staff and generally a grim and unpleasant atmosphere.
Sure, we might be a tad bit sensitive and jaded after a nasty experience we had last night with a Beijing taxi driver who drove us (eventually) to our overnight accommodation near Nanyuan airport.
Let me preface this rant by saying that in the majority of cases, we’ve had excellent experiences with cabs in China, even outside of Shanghai and HangZhou.
Of course there are times when drivers will take the long route, or go slow (when on a timed meter) which you get in any country; and given how inexpensive taxis are here, we usually don’t mind that much – this guy was a serious exception.
In preparation for departing from this rather unusual (and as we now know, unpleasant airport) we booked accommodation just off one of the major ring roads, about 15 minutes drive to Nanyuan airport. The route from Beijing Capital Airport (where we landed) to the hotel was pretty much as simple as it can get. Airport expressway to the ring road; then following it south and west, exiting and taking a major road to the airport.
This $^%&% of a driver took us on an unwarranted cook’s tour of Beijing, including a drive by of downtown, and past the same freeway twice (!) and most of the time he was driving at around 40kms/hr, with cars passing us at twice the speed. At one point he must have sensed that we had cottoned on to his little scheme and he started to speed up once we started talking in Mandarin.
Eventually we found the street the hotel was located on (somehow), but he didn’t know where it was. Instead of calling the hotel with his phone, he asked us where it was (no idea what international visitors with no mobile phone would have done). We motioned to our mobile phone, which was in our bag in the boot, but he wouldn’t let us retrieve it; instead he got out and started asking random passers by on the street.
Not long afterwards, with no help from the street people, he unlocked the boot and we called the hotel. A good 3 minute conversation between this ass and the hotel and it turned out we were about 300 meters from the hotel – he must have been able to see it from the driver’s seat (huge illuminated letters on the side of a very tall building)!
All-in-all it took one hour and fifteen minutes (conservative estimate) or more for a trip that should have taken at most 40 minutes. Not only that, the time wasted on the street, and the unwarranted slow driving speeds – and the wrong directions – he was all class this guy. The meter read over 100 RMB for the fare, Toni paid the guy 113 RMB (the metered amount) and the guy asked for 10 RMB more for some mystical road toll (which is only paid inbound to the airport).
We refused to pay him anymore, and went into the hotel. However, the greedy bastard followed us inside demanding his 10 RMB ($1.40) and showing receipts. He asked the hotel clerk to translate for us, and we related our journey at the same time. I asked the clerk how much one would expect to pay for a trip to the airport from the hotel and he replied not more than 100 RMB (which I assumed would have been in peak time). This driver wanted almost 130 RMB and took over 90 minutes for a 40 minute trip conducted late at night!
In the end Toni pulled 10 RMB out in 1 RMB notes and threw them at the driver. We were quite incensed. Toni told him (in Mandarin), politely – albeit somewhat tersely, that he had his money and he should now leave. He just stood there, and didn’t move (great loss of face in front of the hotel staff).
The awkward situation was ended when, rage surging, we told him to piss off in insultingly fluent Mandarin. At first he hesitated, and then was shocked that we knew this level of Chinese, but in the end the snake left the hotel, leaving us to apologize for bringing the drama into the hotel.
As I said earlier, this is not in any way representative of the majority of taxi experiences in China. You could just as well have this experience in any country, regardless of how well you speak the local language.
We’ve been living in China for almost a year, and this was our first bad experience. We will try not to let this upsetting event tarnish the remainder of our trip, we are scheduled to be in Xi’an in a few hours and then hopefully by evening back in beautiful HangZhou.
That leaves us sitting here in this pitiful excuse for an airport waiting for a flight out, whilst the people around us stare and talk about us in Mandarin right in front of our faces. It is almost safe to say that most of people travelling out of this airport are every bit as rude and unintelligent as the staff who work here.
Pitiful, ugly.. China is better than this.