I left Shanghai’s Mayfair Hotel at about 5:30 am for my 8 am flight to Taiyuan, a central China city most known for glass manufacturing.

At 5:30 am, I didn’t know what to expect in the way of traffic but I know well the international rules of flying which dictate that the plane will, in fact, leave without me if I’m not there.

In Shanghai, a city of 20 million or so people, there would certainly be some traffic, some activity. Even multiplying the population by the insomnia rate and surely you’d have a few hundred thousand people who had to be doing something on the streets at that hour.

Well, I found only one taxi. I jumped in and in my best Chinese, said “Take me to Hongchow airport terminal two.” I think I may have coughed or garbled something as I finally found that fish bone that had pierced my gum during last night’s dinner. (the fish was full of razor like bones, it was like biting into a porcupine!) Anyway, between my bad Chinese, a cough and a garble, the cab driver must have thought I said “take me to the airport at the speed of light!”

This guy puts his Chinese foot to the Chinese metal and is flying… I’m talking flying down the streets of Shanghai at 5:30 am! I swear this VW cab was on two wheels as we turned! These poor insomniac Chinese people were jumping out of the way, coming within inches of being hit.

My first instinct was to put my seat belt on …. oops, forgot I’m in China… seat belts aren’t always there. Most of the time the connection end is shoved down under the seat and you can’t find it… particularly when you are in a full panic mode.

My next thought was to thumb through my English/Chinese, Chinese/English phrase book to find out how to say “SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, JACKSON!”

When we got to the elevated highway, he must have hit the turbo switch because we accelerated even faster! I’m thinking “If this cab blows a tire, not only will I be ejected from this rocket, I will fly over the elevated highway a hundred or so feet to the payment below… AND, this friggin cab will fall on top of me!” (I thought of Wiley Coyote falling off the mountain and then the boulder falls on him… same thing only different.)

I caught a glimpse of myself in the cabbie’s rear view mirror and I actually looked Chinese! We were going so fast that the mach 5 wind speed was pushing the skin on my face back and making my eyes squinty!

I finally just yelled “SLOW DOWN CHINESE DUDE YOU’RE SCARIN THE FUCK OUT OF ME!” He either understood me or could smell the shit in my pants because he brought it down to about 100 mph.

About five minutes later, we reached the airport… about the time I quit hyper-ventilating!

Needless to say, I had plenty of time to catch my flight…. I think there’s something about taxi drivers that’s cross cultural!