On the Cabs

“I feel sad today. Shanghai’s becoming a dead city,” he started our conversation with an unexpected line. “I’ve been driving in Shanghai for over twenty years,” he said. “I started from when I first took to the streets as a taxi driver, and all this time I’ve seen the city change—so much energy in the early days, then gradually…everything feels quieter now. So much quieter” He paused, as if surveying not only the road ahead but also the long trail of history behind him.
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We merged onto a boulevard. “In those first fifteen years, the city was vibrant. I used to see hotels packed with people. ‘The hotel, that one I picked you up from, was always full, you know, the halls teeming with travelers and guests,’ I would say. There were always so many guests—important guests, and they wouldn’t let me in lest I mess with them. Even the streets outside were alive. There was always someone, always movement. But now, it feels like everything has emptied. The hotels aren’t busy anymore—now, both inside and outside, there’s a sense of loneliness, of desolation.”
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“Kind of like the weather today.”
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His voice grew more animated as he described the clientele he once knew. “Back then, the hotels near the airport and the economic development zones—like here in Jinqiao—were bustling with foreign visitors, air hostesses, and businesspeople. I remember saying, ‘When you open the door, you see people coming in and out; the hotel used to be filled with foreigners staying for work or travel, and even the flight attendants were a common sight.’ But now, most of those foreign faces have disappeared. I even had a conversation with a Taiwanese passenger once, who said, ‘Why does it seem like China no longer welcomes us? They treat us as if we were spies.’ It honestly made me feel bad. And I thought, well, maybe it’s not just the pandemic, not just the zero-Covid policy or the two-month lockdown. Can I tell you that it was also political reasons that have made all these foreigners leave.”

Li Mei started driving taxis nearly nine years ago. “I used to work in a hotel—cleaning rooms, folding bedsheets, wiping mirrors and windows. Six days a week, twelve hours a day,” she recalled. “You always had a supervisor watching, telling you to bring a bottle to Room 803, or to search Room 507 for a customer’s missing belt. The higher-up felt like a shadow. And I don’t like being watched.” Taxi driving freed her from the supervisor’s gaze. “I pick the hours, I pick when I eat, I pick when I stop, for most part. No one’s out there checking on you,” she contemplated. “But still, that doesn’t mean it’s not tiring.”

A typical day for Li Mei starts at 6:00 a.m. “I wake up, heat up a bit of water, boil an egg, stretch my legs, and then head out before the sun gets too high.” She prefers morning rush hours: fewer drunks or erratic passengers. By midday, she’s already driven ten to fifteen passengers. She’ll have grabbed a bun, maybe some porridge, from a street stall near wherever she happened to be at that time, most often Luohu. “吃外面的不好,” she did not trust food away from home. But “there’s no other choice for lunch when you’re out driving.”

By the afternoon, the hours blur. “You’re not thinking. You’re just automatically moving and scanning—app, street, app, passenger. Red light. App. Ding! New order.” She’d need to make choices: will this fare take her to a place with charging? Will she arrive at the pickup point in time? Will she hit the 500-yuan threshold for the day, or will traffic and a string of short-distance fares kill her earnings?
Evening gets tougher. “I don’t eat dinner until I get home. I don’t like eating away from home or on the road. It’s not healthy.” When I asked what she ate at home, she said, “Sometimes a bowl of noodles. Sometimes porridge or rice noodles with pickled vegetables. Nothing fancy.”

"You gotta tell ‘em—what’s the difference between qi deficiency and yang deficiency, or on the flip side, yin deficiency? Yin-yang, which began as Taoist concepts, are quite important in how Traditional Chinese Medicine understands diseases. You want to establish a balance between yin and yang, or in the modern sense, people call it homeostasis. When do you use dried roots? When do you use ginseng extract? What’s for post-illness recovery, what’s for boosting vitality day to day? It’s way beyond what folk knowledge covers—it’s pharmacology. We have specialized, professional trainers. Our trainer had slides. The chain stores have regular meetings where the managers gather up to hear announcements from the headquarters, and usually toward the end of those meetings, one of our trainers goes up, introduces themselves, and starts lecturing about ginseng. So you can imagine one Monday morning, thirty store managers in one room, all yawning, and here they go saying something along the lines of: ‘This root takes six years in the soil, cultivated on a piece of land without forest cover, fully compliant with the 2015 national medicinal regulations. It’s got heat, it’s got kick, and it’ll knock the cold right outta your bones.’"

“People from the Northeast are famous for being good drinkers, and that’s how I striked many of my ginseng deals. You gotta go to the dinner table to meet managers, to get close to their procurement department, so they feel like handing you a deal—a favorable one, ideally. Then after the deal’s closed, you gotta buy them another meal to thank them, right? I can drink a lot more than the managers here in the South, so I was very good at it, you know. Some of the bosses in Guangdong don’t drink at all, and then you’ve got to meet them in a teahouse. It’s very different from my hometown. If you don’t drink, you can’t close a single deal in the Northeast.
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My daughter doesn’t drink; she hates it when I drink as well. She says it’s unhealthy, and calls it a waste of money. She tells me to invest. I tell her, ‘Girl, I’m just trying to make today’s rent.’”​​

Li Mei’s world cracked wide open when COVID-19 arrived. “I remember, in 2020, they locked down parts of Shenzhen. I had just dropped off someone at a hospital,” she said. “Then everything stopped. No rides. No people. Nothing. I almost got quarantined for driving that patient. Thank god she was not diagnosed with COVID.”
 
She was fortunate to have bought her car. “The company didn’t suspend rent on its cars. Others still had to pay, even if there were no passengers. Some had to borrow just to keep the car and all the related licenses and certificates.”
 
The months that followed were blurrier still. “There were checkpoints. You had to scan codes, show tests. Monthly nucleic acid COVID test turned weekly, then daily. We all stayed in long lines waiting for volunteers covered head to toe in white isolation suits to stick a cotton bud into your throat, so they can send your sample to the testing center. Drivers had to record their body temperatures every morning before work. I kept the cab windows open all the time. People were scared to sit in a car still. Some wore two masks.”
 
When the worst passed, things didn’t return to normal. “The city came back, but slowly. And not the same. More people working from home, or being fired altogether. More commuters taking subways. Fewer tourists. Fewer businesspeople.” Even now, her earnings haven’t bounced back.

He was quick with numbers. “I used to make 700 to 800 by this time of day—back when the city was busier. By the end of day I’d have over 1000 in my pocket. Sometimes I feel like I’ve earned enough, so I’d stop work and go home at 2PM. I started work before 7 in the morning today, and I haven’t made 300. If I drive until late at night, I might barely reach 600, and even then, it’s not enough to make a decent living. If I can only earn 600 yuan, what will I do after subtracting the costs? You don’t have to be a driver to know the gas prices.”

He spoke with resigned humor and knowledge. “Nowadays, even the fuel situation is complicated,” his tone tinged with a wry sense of inevitability. “People say that electric cars are cheaper to run, but there’s a catch. They tell you, ‘Electric cars are good and cheap,’ but you can’t just switch overnight. You don’t give your car away for free after running it for 200,000 or 300,000 kilometers. But then, you got to think about changing batteries. And even putting aside the short-lived batteries, you have to pay for car maintenance. And not just car maintenance—eventually public maintenance too. You know the taxes on gas go to the so-called ‘road maintenance fund,’ which you don’t have to worry about with new electric cars. More and more are embracing EVs, but the municipality still needs money for road maintenance funds, and they’re not going to get as much from gas taxes. Guess what, I bet that once most of the drivers have switched to electric cars, they’ll start charging EV drivers maintenance fees too. And even as we speak now, the price of electricity itself is rising too. They say, ‘It’s all about the cost of living—eventually, they’ll just start cutting you off, charging you more, until you can’t keep up.’ They’re out there waiting for you, waiting to put their hands in your pocket and draw out the money you’ve left. They’re patient, tricking you into EVs.”

He laughed softly, a dry chuckle, and went on, “if the threshold is set too high, no one will come in anymore. The same goes with foreign investment. It used to be that our country was full of foreign companies with a lot of money—the threshold was low, the incentives were plenty. The foreigners are gone because of politics and tariffs. I remember, a while back, someone said, ‘when tariffs go up, it becomes impossible for them to sell their products—they just shift their operations to Southeast Asia or Singapore.’ And that’s exactly what happened. They had to get their products out in the American market; there was no other choice. Trump had tariffs in his first term, but our relationship was different. We were soft on the international theater. It’s like interpersonal relations. Say you have two people. One punches the other but the other stays silent, obedient even, never ever resistant. Naturally, how could the aggressor get angry at you? But now we’ve fought back. Now the situation becomes one of two quarellers, two swordsmen in a duel. No wonder why Trump fights us off without reservation.”

The scent of earth can cling to a person. Even years after he left the black loam of the Northeast, I still smelled its nurturing sod on his stories—the musky pride of forests, the crisp certainty of winters that crackle, white and uncaring, like old bones. The man driving the cab that day had it all over him. Not literally, but in his voice—buoyant, seasoned, swelling with that nostalgic rhythm peculiar to Northeast China, where sentences sway like folk songs and laughter is as hearty as moonshine. He had the manner of a man who’d once sold something sacred, and now sold only his time.

“We were marketing, marketing our hometown's ginseng,” he said, steering the wheel with one hand and gesturing with the other, like he was back in a boardroom. “You know ginseng, right? One of the ‘three treasures of the Northeast’—ginseng, mink fur, and wula grass. But now? Now it’s ginseng, mink fur, and deer antlers. Ginseng is in both bands. The old treasure still reigns.”

His cab hummed down the Shenzhen freeway like a low thought, slipping between newly completed towers and overpasses crisscrossing the sky above the older roads from the last decade. We’d been talking for close to two hours, and it felt less like a ride and more like sitting in someone’s living room while they told the story of how they’d been uprooted.

“I didn’t have anything to do at home,” he began, referring to 2018. “My godson, he was already managing the Southern China part of a ginseng company. So I figured, hell, why not go with him? I was idle, he had work, and he pulled me down with him to Shenzhen.”

He spoke of it as a whim, but what followed was a story of reinvention that’s not chosen, but necessary.

"Oh yeah. I’ve been back to the Northeast a few times. Each time I go back to visit the field, I pass by my home and stay for a few days, haha. If you only stay in offices and boardrooms, you forget the core of our product: Dongbei ginseng is great because, of course, is ginseng, but more so because it’s grown in Dongbei. The tradition, the climatic conditions, the technology, all the stuff made ginseng the top among the “three treasures of the Northeast.” I used to go to Fusong County in Jilin—Jilin is my hometown. That’s the heartland—real, authentic Feilin-di. The soil there is dark and rich, and farmers take great care harvesting the roots. The scene goes to prove the roots’ quality; I tell coworkers to take photos, and I describe how the roots are like before they get in our glass boxes and put on the shelf. I remember this one old man, who’d been farming his whole life. Early on, he seeded staples only because even then, some people still starve; that was back in the 50s and 60s. There were times he’d find wild ginseng when tilling the ground, and he’d save and wait to sell it when the town market opens. The village collective initiated campaigns to clear forests and make arable land, slash and burn. Then a few decades later there’s 退耕还林 (Tuigeng Huanlin, “grain for green,” the official slogan for a decade long campaign to reforest areas that had been cleared for farming). And then a few years ago, they reversed course again and started 退林还耕 (Tuilin Huangeng, “green for grain,” expanding arable land through clearing forest covers). So, anyways, the old man had a lot to experience in his life. He’s born a generation earlier, you know. I always think of myself as lucky for not being born at his time. Anyways, now he’s been a ginseng farmer for over a decade; the cultivation techniques’ gotten better, people starve a lot less these days, and it just became more profitable to grow ginseng. He said, “Ginseng is more temperamental than a cat. It needs shade but not too much. Moisture but never soggy. You have to give it water, but the water can’t stay in the soil or else the roots won’t go down there. It’s like…cats! Cat’s can’t live without water, but they’re afraid of water. When you want to chase away cats because they make such a huge mating noise, you spray cold water at them. And ginseng’s even more delicate. If you talk too loud, it won’t grow right, haha!” He was joking, of course. Or perhaps half-joking."

I’m thinking about quitting taxi driving all the time. I used to think about opening a rice noodle shop. Guangxi is known for its 螺蛳粉 and 杀猪粉, two ways you cook rice noodles. But rents are sky-high, and it takes a lot to start a business like that. One failed month and you’re done. Ideas like this are just…random ideas. After my thoughts drift everywhere, I have to continue driving. If I don’t earn, I don’t eat—but I don’t owe anyone either. I’m always thinking of doing something else, something different, when things get better or when I’m more established, so to speak. But that attitude just kept me on the road year after year after year, before I realized it.
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I’m a driver, so I guess I do see how the roads change. I don’t really know the city on a personal level. I’d say it really depends who you are. For rich folks, maybe better. I drive through new CBDs with new roads, tunnels, bridges, trees, flowers. But for workers like me, I wouldn’t say it’s gotten better. Everything costs more. The fare rate declined. Riders tip less. The platforms cut bonuses. I used to rent a room in Futian, but that was too close to the expanding Futian CBD to stay affordable. I moved to the periphery years ago. On the other hand, there’s more infrastructure, more lights, more roads. You can’t stop a city like Shenzhen.

“There are roads I don’t like to drive on. Too narrow. Or the buildings make the GPS go crazy. You end up circling and circling.” She points to a place near Huaqiangbei. “That one? Always lagging. Too many towers and bridges and tunnels. Signal lost. The passenger will call and say ‘you’re in the wrong place!’ but how can I explain that the map is broken, not me?”

“You see these neighborhoods?” she says as we pass a cluster of sleek cafes and co-working spaces. “You can’t find a public toilet here. But in the older districts on the margins—Bao’an, Bantian—you can find a noodle shop that points you to a washroom, or sometimes, they have their own washroom that you can use.”

Li owns her electric taxi. “Some drivers also rent their cars from a fleet company. It’s around two thousand yuan per month,” she explained. “I bought mine. It’s not that expensive, and I don’t have to pay the rental fee every month. Plus charging, plus tolls, plus meals, at the end, I try to make at least 600 to 1000 yuan profit each week. That’s if there are no breakdowns.”
The electric taxis are quiet, but it demands rather a peculiar driving schedule when it comes to charging. “In Longgang there are a few stations, but sometimes they are all full. None of them are close to where I live.”

“In central areas, forget it. You park, wait, hope someone leaves soon.” She said she sometimes has to wait an hour just to access a charger. “Most of the charging points are in parking lots of office buildings. Some workers park their cars, occupy the charging point for the whole entire day, before leaving and driving home long long after their cars have finished charging. Meanwhile, I’m waiting in my car, desperately in need of recharge. That’s money wasted. Time wasted.”

The city of Shenzhen, lauded for becoming China’s first fully electrified public fleet city, has invested heavily in charging infrastructure. Yet, as with many policy-level changes, the everyday experience for drivers varies. “The government says we have tens of thousands charging points. Maybe. But how many are actually working? How many are near where we go? That’s the problem.”

In Guangdong, particularly in Shenzhen, the sprawling ride-hailing has been saturated. Shenzhen's 2024 Online Car-Hailing Market Monitoring Information Release Report documented over 340,000 licensed drivers by the end of 2024, a figure that surged by 20,856 in just six months, reflecting both the sector’s appeal and its intensifying competition. As explained in Supreme People’s Court’s Press Conference on December 23rd, 2024, most drivers are not directly employed by platforms like DiDi or CaoCao Mobility but as independent contractors through agreements with third-party agencies or by registering as self-employed individuals—a strategy platforms use to circumvent traditional labor obligations such as social security contributions, paid leave, or workplace injury protections. This legal ambiguity leaves drivers vulnerable, as they lack the safeguards of formal employment, despite being subject to platform algorithms that dictate their workloads, earnings, and penalties for underperformance, effectively blurring the line between autonomy and control.
 

With heightening competition amid inadequate labor protection, drivers face socioeconomic challenges. The 2024 Car-Hailing Market Report showed that only 55,000 vehicles completed 10 or more daily orders, which translates into an average daily revenue of 438 RMB. Within these 438 yuan of earnings, the costs of vehicle maintenance, fuel, and platform commissions can consume up to 30% of income. Moreover, nearly 40% of drivers fall short of 10 daily orders, struggling to break even in a market where supply vastly outstrips demand. Shenzhen’s authorities have repeatedly warned of market saturation, citing the city’s 400,000 private vehicles and extensive public transit network, which reduces reliance on ride-hailing services. Notwithstanding deteriorating pay, the sector continues to attract new entrants lured by low barriers to entry and promises of flexibility, only to face grueling 12-hour shifts. Other cities saw worse conditions. In the city of Haikou, for example, full-time drivers work 13-hour days for net earnings as low as 200–280 RMB, according to the municipality’s 2024 Q4 Online Car-Hailing Market Monitoring Information Release Report.
 

Efforts to address these issues have emerged at the national level, with policies like the 2024 Supreme Court guidelines emphasizing the need to recognize labor relations based on “actual management control,” even if drivers are technically independent. Meanwhile, Shenzhen’s regulators have intensified scrutiny of platform practices, penalizing firms like DiDi for operational violations and urging transparency in earnings and contract terms. Yet, systemic reforms remain inadequate, leaving drivers in a precarious position—caught between the gig economy’s promises of autonomy and the stark realities of financial instability and inadequate protections. As Shenzhen’s market epitomizes the broader challenges facing China’s platform economy, the plight of its ride-hailing drivers highlights the urgent need for legal and structural reforms to reconcile flexibility with fairness in the digital age.