One of the nice things about living in Beijing is the availability of that rare Irish species, the taxi. Without exaggeration, we have never waited more than 20 seconds to catch one of the familiar red Xiali cabs that dominate the city streets.
Therefore, when we discovered our car had a puncture last Sunday morning, and with only 40 minutes to make the 15-mile journey to the airport to meet visiting friends, we didn't panic. We just waved down one of Beijing's 67,000 taxis.
A cab driver pulled up and we all climbed in. He wasn't able to grasp our pathetic efforts at pronouncing "airport" in Chinese (try it - jichang).
The penny eventually dropped when we started to wildly flap our arms about.
As we drove along the airport expressway, the cramped taxi, similar to the old Fiat 127, began to veer across the lanes. To our horror, we realised the driver was nodding off at the wheel. He must have just been on the night shift.
We started shouting to each other in a desperate attempt to keep him awake. The fact that the petrol gauge was stuck on "red" for the last ten minutes of the journey didn't do our nerves much good either. Discovering (in between his naps and spitting out the window) that he was just out of petrol, he reduced speed and we chugged our way to the arrivals section of Capital International Airport. We paid our sleepy driver the £5 fare. As well as being plentiful, taxis are very cheap.
But our "bad taxi day" didn't end there. With our two Irish visitors safely landed we set about getting a taxi for six back into town. A taxi van was parked nearby and the drivers eyes lit up when he saw what he thought was a group of innocent, newly arrived foreigners approach. Practically licking his lips with glee, he demanded a £35 fare, six times above the going rate.
We eventually settled for two metred taxis which travelled back in convoy to our friends' hotel. One driver attempted to charge double the fare of his colleague. We won out in that argument.
But the positives of Beijing taxis far outweigh the negatives that we encountered. And the authorities are setting out to improve standards significantly in the run-up to the Olympics.
The first step in this direction came last week with the announcement of the establishment of a joint venture between Singapore's Delgro Taxi Management Company and Beijing's Jinjian Taxi Company, involving an initial investment of US$30 million.
Delgro is promising the highest of standards in its taxi service. Apart from providing top training for drivers, it will equip its cabs with a global positioning system (GPS) which will connect taxis with an information network that covers 18 counties and districts of Beijing.
The Beijing Municipal Authority has pledged that all taxis in Beijing will be equipped with GPS by 2008.
The majority of taxis in Beijing are Xiali models, the result of a joint venture between Toyota and a local Chinese manufacturer. They were not made to provide comfort for big westerners. But the good news is that Delgo is promising to use a better quality model for its fleet.
According to a spokesman for the Municipal Government, the number of taxi operating companies in Beijing will be reduced from 800 to 200 through restructuring and mergers. It will also decrease the number of taxi licences from 67,000 to 60,000. Currently , there is no cap on the number of licenses issued.
By 2008 the plan is that 80 per cent of Beijing taxis will use natural gas to help reduce pollution. In another useful Olympic preparation, Beijing cabbies are taking English lessons. They have all been told that they must have a minimum of 50 phrases in English to cope with Olympic tourists.
And what do Beijing cabbies think of all this change? Drivers, Lu Baojin and Liu Changshan welcome the promised improvements. Lu has worked as a taxi driver in Beijing for the last two years. He told The Irish Times that at the moment taxi driving in the city is "not a job for a human".
"I work at least 13 to 14 hours a day. I start at 7 a.m. and do not finish until 9 p.m. As for lunch, I just eat something by the side of the street." He says his income is only "so so". "If I work everyday, I can earn more than 2000 RMB (about £200) a month." That is more than double the average annual income in Beijing.
His colleague, Lie Changshan, says the advantage of the job is you are your own boss, but he agrees change is necessary. "It is exhausting. There is no structure. The income is not good. I earn only 1,000 RMB (about £100) a month." But no matter what the standards, being able to grab a taxi in seconds day or night beats the long queues still evident in Dublin.
miriamd@163bj.com