(LI SHIGONG)

Taxi drivers in Xi'an tend to fall into one of two categories: the nice ones and the nasty ones. The majority of drivers belong to the first group and are usually talkative and friendly. If a foreigner manages to say his destination convincingly in Chinese, they will likely react with an excited "waaaa!" and go on to complement the foreigner's language level, despite the fact he or she may have only said three words. This kind of driver tends to engage me in conversation throughout the journey, asking the usual things about Chinese food, my opinions of China, and wildly overestimating my salary. But some drivers move quickly beyond the standard script, and get into very diverse topics. I have had some of my most interesting Chinese conversations with Xi'an taxi drivers, who each seem to have their own special field of expertise, carefully developed and honed on their endless journeys around the city.

A journey with the second category of driver is much less enjoyable. These cabbies are the ones who speed off the instant I sit down, leaving me gripping the door handle and pushing a foot against the back of the front seat in preparation for the seemingly inevitable crash. They make little conversation, and instead stare intently ahead, hell-bent on driving as fast as every available stretch of road will allow. They wrench the car in and out of gear. They seem incapable of keeping the steering wheel straight as they hungrily search for gaps to speed into. The only plus point to these drivers is that there is little danger of them wasting either my time or my money.

And then one day, I stepped into a different kind of cab. As I sat down in the back seat, the driver turned around and said, in English, "Hello, sir. Where are you going?" I almost couldn't comprehend what was happening, and blurted out my destination in Chinese. The cab pulled away into the stream of traffic, and soon the driver and I were engaged in a gentle linguistic tug-of-war. He asked me a question in English, I answered in Chinese, he asked something else, and so on until his smiling persistence had me speaking my mother tongue, slowly, to him.

We were going to the airport, and that left enough time for the dialogue to develop. His confidence grew the more he spoke, and soon he was explaining how he shared his cab with his brother-in-law, how he had worked for a state-owned company for many years before being made redundant, and how Xi'an had changed during his lifetime. I discovered that he had learned English while ferrying passengers around the city. At school he had studied Russian, but he couldn't remember any of the language. By his own admission, he was a bad student. Although he needed time to formulate what he was going to say, his English was surprisingly good. The unhurried atmosphere of the cab ride seemed the perfect platform for him to showcase his skills, and his slow speech mirrored his sedate driving. His listening was not so sharp, however, and I often had to repeat and simplify my questions before he grasped what I was saying. It was as if my words were reaching him from far away. He would concentrate intently when listening, narrowing his eyes slightly, and finally announce his understanding by exclaiming "Oooohhhh, I see. Yes," then begin his response.

As we pulled up to the airport terminal, I felt reluctant to bid farewell to this unique individual. I thought about all the times when I needed to take cabs at awkward times, like the daily four o'clock shift change that effectively takes taxis out of circulation for two hours, and asked him for his mobile number. He seemed used to this kind of request, and happily handed over a blue business card. I politely studied the Chinese printed on the front, then turned it over as I put it in my wallet. Printed on the back in English was the message "We'll be friends and happy once we meet and have a deal." When I asked him if he had an English name, he replied "Of course. I am Herbert."

I have since had many occasions to call Herbert, and I'm not the only one. I have often heard him make calls from his mobile, using his measured English to arrange his next ride with a foreign client. Herbert's fame has even spread to some of Xi'an's expat websites and blogs. I'm sure he never imagined that his resourcefulness and perseverance in using English would turn him into a local celebrity, but it has.

The author is a British living in Xi'an