Last night, I decided that from now until the start of the Olympics, I will ask every taxi driver that I get a ride with whether or not they can speak English. I will ask in English first, then Chinese. If they can speak English, I will test for key words (like…airport, forbidden city, olympic park, gymnastics, etc…). I think a monthly view of this will be more interesting.
So far, the tally is … 1 taxi – no English.
I don’t see why they worry so much, I’ve been at cabs in NY where the driver didn’t speak English, not to mention a certain “incident” with Airport security in Toronto, where the agent couldn’t speak either english nor french… which I thought was actually cool and spoke well about how open Canadians are.
Didn’t the government hand out phrase books to all the cabbies? When I was ther a year ago I saw several cabbies with them and one or two trying them out on the passengers, like me. Mei wen ti
Yes, they did. Books & tapes for them to use on their down time/while driving. I have been in cabs when some were listening. But, at this rate, we’re looking at 1 taxi driver in every 500 may speak some English. I don’t know how big a problem this will be, but it won’t be insignificant.