Shanghai Taxis

So, catching a taxi in Shanghai has some of the proverbial ins and outs. Our friend Tim warned us that the red cabs don't really have any rules; meaning, they make New York cabbies look like grandmothers AND they might try to scam you on the fare. So at the end of our first solo day out in Shanghai, we decided just to take a cab back rather than try the subway at rush hour. Heeding Tim'e warning we passed on several red cabs and finally hailed a yellow cab. That was easy, we thought, until we showed him the address and he spat back some Chinese at us. We made good use of "wo bu Ming bai" (I don't understand), and finally he said "no go there". So we thought maybe the train might be our only hope - started walking that direction and saw an empty blue cab. Hailed, stopped. Very nicely dressed, literally wearing white gloves! So we asked if he would go to Pudong, and he said yes. We showed him the address and then went back and forth a bit, neither of us understanding the other. It was clear he didn't know the address - so we suggested he take us to the nearest subway station, which we pointed out on the map. Well this confused the driver more - he said "that's not Pudong!" So then the driver just hopped out of the cab and ran off! Turns out he just went onto the hotel we were in front of and found a bellboy who spoke English. We straightened out the whole thing and made it back to our friend's apartment after a forty-five minute ride. Total cost: 40RMB, or about seven dollars. This morning we took another blue cab (love the white gloves) to the airport. It felt like a really long way and took about an hour with traffic; would have been about a hundred dollars in the states but only cost us a hundred RMB or about thirteen dollars. Don't know how they do it!