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“Helloooooo Howww Aaaare Youuuuu?” My plane from San Francisco had just landed in Shanghai, China. It wasn’t my first time in China, in fact I was returning for a third year of battling 18 million people for a spot on the cement jungle that is Shanghai. After being gone for a month, I’m always a little worried that my Chinese won’t quite do it for the taxi driver, and that I’ll spend 10 minutes saying over and over “Long Dong Da Dao hu Guang Lan Lu!” This time the stress being on DA, and next time stressing the Dong. This time would be different. As soon as I sat down in the cab the driver croons at me four words I’m sure he’s been studying for the past year: “Helloooooo Howww Aaaare Youuuuu?”

Now, since China had been granted to show off it’s international prowess via the 2008 Summer Games, the media had been littered with reports on everything China. I had seen more than one report on how all the taxi drivers in Beijing were learning English for the upcoming Games. However, as far as I knew (or could tell from numerous taxi rides), Shanghai taxi drivers were far from being required to do the same. So, needless to say, I was surprised. I had snagged a super-excited-for-the-olympics-English-practicing Taxi driver. I did my best Chinese version of my address, and off we went, the radio babbling on and on about the Olympic games (which was one of the handful of phrases I could pull out of the jumble of Chinese words). For the rest of the ride he practiced his English. “Zhouguai—LEFT!” he would exclaim. “YoGuai—RIGHT!” “YiQiZhou—Keeep Going!” I sat in semi-confusion as I kept worrying that he had stopped practicing and had started actually asking if this is where he is suppose to Left, Right or YiQiZhou.

In the end I made it the the front steps of my apartment complex. He helped me unload my “Four bag” “heavy,” and then drove off into the Shanghai night happy that the LaoWei had understood his English.