Welcome to China, Now Just Survive the Taxi Ride

Traveling is a challenge.

Mind you, I'm not a novice at flying. I've been traveling on planes alone since age 9, and I have flown several times overseas on my own. However, logistics on both ends of flying are kind of a special place in hell for me. I do not like the jumble of getting off a plane, jet-lagged as all get out, then playing "find the baggage in the labyrinthine airport terminal," and then playing the "where the hell am I living again?" game.

Arriving in China, my first thought was "Thank god I am finally here." I had a nice, thirteen hour flight to contemplate that I was leaving my country of birth for the longest period of time ever. And that I would not see my family for seven months, the longest period of time I have ever gone without visiting them. And that I knew all of maybe two people in the whole friggin country of China.

Needless to say, I did not get much rest on the flight.

When I got there, I was relieved to end this leg of the journey. I just needed to get to my dorm at BeiWai, and then I could pass out.

There is one serious obstacle that stood between me and a bed. Danger, thy name is Taxi Driver.

So. I had really only one viable option: use a taxi to get to BeiWai. Now, taxis are a special creature in China, and the drivers in them speak in a special type of Beijing accent that is near incomprehensible. It is, in fact, a testament to a student's Chinese language ability to be able to communicate and understand Beijing taxi drivers. You can imagine, with me getting off the plane and having not spoken Chinese for a month and it being 4 am my local time and all, that my Chinese was less than stellar.

Somehow, through a combination of broken Chinese, some random "arrr" sounds thrown in to sound vaguely Beijing accent-like, some pantomime, some pointing at Google maps I had printed, and a lot of repeating "BeiWai BeiWai BeiWai," the taxi driver finally realized that I wanted to go to BeiWai. He proceeded, through some miracle beyond my comprehension, to take me there.

There was only one small mishap. See, Beijing traffic is death. It's like the "dog eat dog" proverb as lived out in highway scenarios. So, we were traveling along nicely, with only a few spurts of vicious honking and a few choice words uttered by the taxi driver. However, at a tight intersection, this bus had the nerve to want to merge into the lane. My taxi driver was having none of it. As the passenger, I could do nothing but watch as my taxi driver decides to play chicken with a huge bus.

He proceeds to lose. Duh.

The bus taps the taxi. Yes, the taxi was hit by a bus. A bus hit the taxi. This was what was running through my sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, completely overwhelmed mind. I sat there completely at a loss, while my taxi driver gets out of the taxi, in the middle of the Beijing highway, to berate the bus driver. This carried on for about a minute or so. I was still sitting there, unclear as to what the protocol is for a taxi passenger who's taxi has just been tapped by a bus full of people. Well, the bus backed up a bit, and my taxi driver got back in and drove off as though nothing had happened.

I did make it to campus in one piece. I also learned a valuable lesson: All is fair in love, war, and Beijing transit situations. Go for the kill, or be killed.