My invitation to a party on Saturday evening in a courtyard house located in a narrow Beijing hutong, said: "Please come by taxi, as there is not much space to park." Imagine such a request on an invitation to a function in Dublin, especially if people need a guaranteed ride home after the party is over.
But Beijing is one of the most user-friendly cities in the world as far as taxis are concerned. There are so many little red cabs plying for hire in the streets, day and night, that if one walks to the edge of the footpath, several taxis are likely pull in sharply hoping for business.
Though small by Western standards, the taxicabs are getting better.
Throughout the 1990s, the streets were a sea of under-powered yellow minibus taxis called miandi, or bread loaves, but these were phased out last year because of their terrible safety record and high levels of exhaust pollution, and replaced by little "Xiali" saloons. Soon these may in turn give way to bigger Renaults.
Anxious to provide outlets for laid-off workers from ailing state enterprises, the government has allowed the almost unlimited issue of licences to taxi companies and there are now some 65,000 taxis crowding the Beijing streets. Because they are so readily available, an e-commerce company called MyWeb Inc has been able to contract the 5,000-vehicle YinJin taxi company in Beijing to deliver goods ordered on its television portals.
The fares are pretty steep for locals, and were reduced by a third recently on the orders of the Beijing Taxi Administrative Bureau to encourage more people to use them. At around £1 for the first 4 km and 15p a kilometre after that, foreigners especially find them pretty reasonable.
The drivers sit enclosed in metal security cages, but that doesn't stop them holding forth to customers, like taxi-drivers the world over. Their line of questioning rarely varies. Where are you from? What do you do? What do you earn? What age are you? The last two questions are not considered rude in China, and (in theory) the older one is the more respect one receives.
After that, they like to talk politics, and they can be pretty subversive.
It is in a Beijing taxi that one hears the current political jokes. Like the one about the deputies in the rubber-stamp People's Congress, which goes: "Have you heard about the three hands? One is for clapping; one is for shaking hands and one is for voting." Or the newspaper sub-editor who published a picture of Li Peng (Chairman of the National People's Congress) posing with pigs at a farm, with the caption: "Li Peng is the second from the right."
Such treachery has apparently become known to the authorities - probably because Premier Zhu Rongji's reforms of the bureaucracy mean that many officials now have to use taxis rather than government limousines, and they get an earful now and then - and earlier this year the taxi company bosses held a meeting to warn their drivers to take care. Foreign passengers, they were told, might be spies trying to collect intelligence. If they are, it is of questionable value. Anyone could get the impression from Beijing taxi-drivers that the Chinese people are in a state of permanent outrage about the stupidity of the government, just as one might conclude from the natter of London taxi-drivers that all England was fascist.
But much more to the point: they were warned that plainclothes security police might pose as passengers to record what drivers are saying, especially about sensitive taboo political issues like democracy, corruption at the top, Falun Gong, etc. Some of his comrades have lost their licences because of their "loose lips", a driver said.
The taxi fraternity in Beijing do have a lot to complain about. They work long shifts, often with few fares. They are designated to be a "special profession", which means they are not entitled to statutory holidays.
Unlike their Western counterparts, they cannot rely on tips to supplement their incomes; not only is tipping not expected, but a driver will sometimes give the customer the benefit if neither has the exact change.
All of us have heard horror stories about bad-apple taxi-drivers, including one who got into a fist fight with an American client who berated him for deliberately taking a longer route.
There wasn't a surly taxi-driver to be found on Friday afternoon, however.
Indeed, they were all positively gleeful. After weeks of drought the rain came down with the force of water cannon. Every pedestrian, it seemed, suddenly waved frantically for a Xiali to stop. And for a few brief minutes the Beijing taxi-driver knew the joy of a seller's market.