Taxi tips for Beijing

[DougYWG]

We had five days in Beijing prior to our Pacific Princess cruise. We took lots of taxis - four or five times a day. They are plentiful and cheap. We never paid more than three bucks (except for the Summer Palace, see below).

 

Despite what they say, none of the drivers had a single word of English. Our hotel doorman was very good. He wrote our destination in Chinese and showed it to the driver. Coming back, we had the hotel card with the name in Chinese. Never had a problem.

 

Coming out of the Summer Palace we were approached in English and asked if we wanted a metered taxi. Metered taxi? Why not. The meter had been fixed. The fare out was 55RMB. The meter fare home was 100, same route. I said to my wife to get her things, we'll get out of the car and negotiate through the window. How much? 100. No, no, meter is wrong, it was only 55. No, no, 100. Much shouting and gesticulating. I ended up giving him 60. HE can take ME to the taxi board.

 

That cab had a taxi sign on the roof and a meter inside. It did not have the blue 'two dollar' sticker on the side window. Make sure you see that before you get in. It is a blue oval sticker with 2.0 clearly showing.

 

As we approached our hotel, he wanted to drop us on the other side of the street. We said no, take us to the front door. He stopped on the other side anyway. Then we knew there was something funny going on. When you get out of a cab at your hotel, the doorman writes the cab number on a card and gives it to you. It has the phone number for complaints to the taxicab board. When your driver does not want to take you right to the door, beware! Something fishy.

 

Other than that, it was a great way to get around.

[B-HQC]

This is not unusual in Beijing. The taxi drivers are always preying on unsuspecting tourists. The whole "metered taxi" talk is pointless because all the taxis have to be metered to be legal. Also never take the taxi whose driver approaches you, always hail one from the street. If it doesn't look "right", tell it to go away and get another one. There are plently of taxis in the city.

 

If you are already in the taxi and are being conned, ask for a receipt or get the attention of a policeman. They always will side with the toursit due to rampant dishonest taxi drivers.

[kaisatsu]

It's true that Beijing taxi drivers rarely speak any English. Sometimes we wonder if they even speak Mandarin! Maybe there's a rule that to drive a taxi you must slur your words together as much as possible. So it's always a good idea to have the location written down in Chinese - the bigger the better, since some drivers are a little far-sighted.

 

Also, when hailing a taxi on the street, the way to tell if it's available or not is to look for the little red For Hire sign, either in the middle of the dashboard or up by the middle rearview mirror. At night, these light up, but be sure the taxi still has a sign on top (and a meter), because in some places people drive around in cars that look like the older Citroen taxis with a red light on their dashboard!

 

Honestly, illegal taxis are just a part of life in Beijing, especially for people who live in the suburbs, where it's hard to get a legal metered taxi to come pick you up. For visitors, however, it's much safer and very simple to stick to legal taxis.

 

Never bother with taxis that try to set a pre-paid price. Whatever they're asking is more than you should pay, and if it's not, they'll be willing to run the meter anyway. (The exception of course is hiring a taxi for the entire day to take you to the Great Wall, etc. This should cost around 400-500 RMB.)

 

There are some questionable calibration issues with some taxis. We take the same route to work every day, and every once in a while, we'll hit a taxi whose meter says something like our 18km trip was 20km. We've never encountered one bad enough to report, but if you do think something's up, every driver has a card displayed in the taxi with his picture and driver number on it. One interesting thing to note is that usually, the lower the number, the longer he's been driving. Someone around 100,000 has probably been driving for 10 years, whereas the guy in the 250-thousand number is likely at just a few months.

 

If you feel like you're being conned, the receipt (and the meter display) will show how many kilometers you've driven, and how long you've been waiting (stopped or moving slowly). In Beijing, with the traffic, wait time is really the biggest thing that will drive your taxi fare up. The same trip that costs 15 RMB with no traffic could easily cost over 30 RMB during rush hour. If you're spending a lot of time stopped in traffic, be prepared to pay more.

 

Finally, keep in mind that taxi rates also go up after 11pm, when fares start at 11 RMB instead of 10. Also, on long trips, the rates go up after a certain distance.

 

In general, taxis are pretty honest, although you may have trouble getting them to understand where you're going unless you have it written down. Be sure to ask at the hotel desk for a card before you leave, because even the western hotels have Chinese names, and most drivers won't know the English names!

[DougYWG]

All good advice - thanks, folks.