There's always a market demand for something. In our case, yesterday morning, it was to get a taxi.

We arrived at Beijing West Railroad station, and when we followed the signs to the taxis, the line was at least 70 deep. 70! For taxis! Instead of waiting, we decided to try the upstairs taxi station. Another 70 deep!!!!

And when we walked around outside to try to find a taxi on the street, most of them waved us off - I'm assuming they'd get hit by a fine (traffic flow is paramount in a congested city like Beijing).

But of course, Hao managed to find this taxi driver who had illegally parked on the curb (and was illegally picking up customers). He tripled booked us and negotiated a flat rate with each of the three destinations, and off we went. The meter hummed a happy 0.00 fare the whole ride.

The driver resembled a young, skinny Yao Ming. He seemed like a pretty ambitious guy - he was barking orders through his walkie talkie as well as answering cell phone calls... all while driving. Talk about a consummate multi-tasker! But of course, I could only know him through his mannerisms - he had hidden his driver identification card.

The driver had no respect for the road. He ignored all markers on the highway - any piece of concrete was good enough for him. The shoulder? Good enough to drive. The bus lane? It's his lane now! While other drivers seemed to respect all the rules of the road (given it was rush hour - 8am), this guy seemed intent to drop off his illegal fare with as much haste.

He at least respected red lights ... sort of. After we dropped off the first guy, the cabbie decided to pull an illegal U-turn across 3 lanes of traffic. On the same side. We went from being in the far right lane to going in the opposite direction. 

I couldn't help but laugh at the whole thing - to me, he seemed to represent the ultimate opportunist capitalist. Although he had negotiated a fare for both Hao and I (60 yuan), I tipped the guy 50 more yuan in support of his highly illegal endeavors.