Ich Bin Ein Beijinger: Roadway Rules, Sage Advice to Soothe Your Traffic Troubles

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

December 2002 - What determines right of way on Beijing roadways?
It happens that there’s an elegant formula to calculate this. For any given vehicle: R=M/P where M is a vehicle’s mass, P is its present Blue Book price, and R is the resulting Right of Way Quotient. Compare the R-values of two vehicles, and accord right of way to the vehicle with the larger value. Mind you, this is not necessarily going to be the larger vehicle: A late model, 4,000-kilogram Land Rover worth RMB 220,000 has an R-value of 0.018, far lower than a battered Xiali cab worth RMB 2,200 and weighing in at only 400kg, with an R-value of 0.18. The Land Rover is therefore obliged to yield when, for example, said Xiali decides to jump the morning U-turn queue at Chaonei Xiaojie. To calculate right of way in left turn situations, just multiply by V, the velocity of each respective vehicle: RL=V(M/P). Thus, were the Land Rover attempting a left turn in front of the Xiali in the example above, it could claim right of way only if its velocity were 10 times greater than that of the Xiali.

What can I do about the garlic-sweat smell in cabs and public transportation?
Garlic is an integral part of Northern Chinese cuisine, and its health benefits have long been known to Beijing’s legendarily health-conscious cabbies. Alas, the particular olfactory accent it lends to perspiration isn’t always appreciated. For those of you who dislike the scent, there is only one solution, and that is preemption: Eat plenty of raw garlic and before you know it you won’t notice that smell on the bus, in the cab, or wherever you may be.

Many cab drivers don’t seem to respond to street names and intersections, but refer to places instead by some arcane moniker. What can I do?
Ah, yes, all those place-names like Maizidian, Beixinqiao, and Hongmiao might indeed be misleading to a newcomer, referring as they do to general, ill-defined areas rather than specific locales, and to ancient structures that often no longer exist. This needn’t frustrate you. Simply purchase a map of the pre-Republican city, scan it such that its dimensions correspond accurately to a contemporary road map of the city, print on a large polyester transparency and affix this atop the modern map. Now you can reliably use the ancient names of temples, gates, bridges and markets to state your destinations. And it should only take you two or three years to memorize enough of them to get around without your map.

It seems recently that many cab drivers don’t know their way around town too well. How can I tell the veterans from the green horns?
Nothing inspires confidence like hopping in a cab, pronouncing your destination, and hearing that friendly “Ei! Haoooo lei!” as the cheerful cabbie slaps the meter light down on the dash to a sonorous chime and a friendly welcome message. But I’m afraid I agree that as often as not these days, the drivers need real handholding to get you where you’re going.

Notice that every cab driver has a laminated placard on the dash in front of the passenger seat. The placard has a photo of the driver, a six-digit number, and the driver’s name. First, compare the photo to the man or woman at the wheel: Any obvious physical changes are a sign of elapsed time (read: ample experience). Remember, courtesy demands that you comment liberally on any noticeable hair loss or weight gain since the photo was taken. Next, examine the six-digit number, a more objective indicator of how long a cabbie has been plying the trade: The smaller the number, the more seasoned the driver. Expect any driver with a number above 210,000 to require laborious instructions. Those rare individuals holding numbers below 050,000 are endowed with an amazing psychic gift enabling them to shift across multiple lanes without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.