Shanghai Shorts: Horns a'Honking

I flipped off a taxi driver this morning.

Knowing me, you're likely thinking to yourself, "what else is new?"

I don't actually run around flipping off random strangers, you know. Today, I had a particularly good reason.

I woke up a little late for work so I had to cab it instead of taking the metro. My office is inside a hotel compound and its main entrance opens to this single-lane, one-way little paved bit of street.

So the cab pulls up to the main entrance and before he even comes to a full stop, I hear that noise that all of us in China have since grown accustomed to hearing whether it's necessary for it to be produced or not: the honking of a horn.

Once, twice, three times more as I get my cash out of my wallet to pay my cabbie. I am getting annoyed. It's not like I'm being slow like some of the other people we also see in this city, taking hours on hours to get out of a cab (and even then you are generally courteous and wait on them if necessary, you don't want them to leave shit behind just because you're an impatient little cocksucker, there is usually no reason to rush someone getting out of a cab no matter how long they take).

I whirl around in my seat and glare at the driver through two sheets of glass. The honking stops.

I thank my taxi driver, step out of the cab, and walk round to the back of it to stand right in front of the honking taxi behind us. I stand right in front of his cab so that he can't go even as my own cab takes off. I lean forward, and, with a nasty look on my face, up goes my middle finger.

And off I go into my office, making it to my seat with minutes to spare.

Why this city feels it's necessary to honk at EVERY SINGLE THING in the goddamn street, I'll never know. I recently heard a story about a bus driver honking at a bike rider who'd fallen off his bike after a collision with another cyclist and couldn't get back up, and because the dude on the ground was "in the way," the bus driver then, very annoyed, steered his bus around the obviously injured man.

What the fuck, Shanghai.