Driving Through Spring's Winter (Part 2)

March 16th, 2025:

On a Friday, the streets of Zhangjiang Region in the Pudong District of Shanghai looked empty and desolate.

“There used to be money out there to be made—if you’re quick and you know the system, you can earn quite well. But when there’s no money to be made, everyone’s just waiting, accumulating their losses. It was like a shared understanding among us drivers: if you’re not making money, you’re just slowly fading away.”

“Back in the day, our fares were five yuan per kilometer for the full-service luxury cars, three and a half to four for comfortable sedans with extra legroom, and two and a half for the affordable, economy models. Now the rates are adjusted to three and a half for luxury, three for comfortable, and two and a half for economy. We don’t care if the passenger plays a luxury order anymore. It makes no difference. For economy cars, if there are no passengers, Didi even gives bonuses to try to make up for it. That just brings the economy rates closer to the business rates. And when you subtract the costs and do the math, for a hundred kilometers, I get only 350 yuan. After deducting my expenses, the always rising gas prices, there’s barely anything left for me.”

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.”

Quietly, smokestacks started lining the viaduct. “You see,” he said, “the city is now a mix of the old and the new. We started near Jinqiao, mostly populated by the exporting companies in the manufacturing industry because it’s an Economic Development Zone (editor’s note: designated during China’s economic reform, EDZs are areas with preferential business policies created to attract foreign direct assessment and promote economic growth). We’re now passing through the high-tech park of Zhangjiang, a tech R&D center. The landmark glass buildings you’re seeing along the roads, backed by Zhangjiang’s business investment group, were constructed years ago. They still haven’t officially opened for business. The place is just sitting empty, still getting furnished up, they say. You know, interior decor has its own timeline—they gotta finish most of the work right at the same time they finish recruiting and striking deals with the tenants, right? Then maybe it’ll turn into a mall, a warm workplace, a stacked workplace, or some other sort of corporate offices. Once businesses move in, that’s when the money starts flowing. But if they can’t attract tenants? Well, it’s kind of like a stalled project—not exactly abandoned, but not moving forward either. Some people are still working on it, but the progress is just too slow. Eh, guess they’ll take their time with it. The buildings are there waiting for contracts that never come through. The development projects around have stalled, and the roads, well, some roads haven’t even been fixed properly in years. These newly developed business zones never had any businesses come in.”

As we drove past a familiar stretch of highway—the one that had once been notorious for its trucks and gridlocks and now somehow flowed more smoothly—he mused, “You know, back in the day, even the highways were a story. I’d say, ‘From the hotel on Jingqiao Road to the expressway, there was always congestion.’ The road looks very empty today, but if you think about it, there are only four lanes. And we’re talking about the main road connecting the entire district. You’d expect it to be full of cards, at least not as empty as today. Before Covid hits in 2020, you’d see people waiting at every red light, waiting in line to get on this viaduct. But now, we’ve passed at least five entrances, and did you even see a car coming up? Not at all!”

When I first started interviewing taxi drivers two years ago, I often used our shared frustration at endless traffic jams to start the conversation. They were drivers and I was a commuter in a buzzling city constantly caught off guard by waves of cars that flooded through its narrow body, waiting impatiently to move forward. Every second wasted felt like a grievous loss, a common experience that invited casual chats that would’ve otherwise died in awkward silence. At that time, I lived in a country and a world recovering rigorously from Covid. The fog on the road ahead seemed to clear, and our climb regained its sense of momentum. At that time, neither my proleptic pens nor perceptive presagers could’ve foretold the desolation that now befall the busy roads I complained about with countless taxi drivers. The lack of cars proved more ominous than the presence of them. We were riding smooth down a road clear, but none cheered.

Gone was the traffic, and along with it, so many other things. Like young drivers’ patience. “I’ve seen so many young drivers in our car fleet. They’re already snapping. They’re constantly complaining about every little thing. They swear in the fleet’s group chat after every single fare, at every passenger, every rule in the system. It’s not like the passengers did anything outrageous. Sometimes the young guys are the unreasonable ones; they call the riders and go like: ‘hey I saw you booked a ride half an hour later, I’m already around the pick up location, can we go in five minutes?’ That’s outright crazy! The passengers booked the ride for when they needed it in advance, and now you’re telling them to get in the car half an hour early on the spot. And the young drivers are frustrated when they hear a ‘No.’ They’re not angry at anyone, if you think about it. They’re angered by the economy, by lowering fares. But if this continues, things could boil over. That frustration is like a pressure cooker waiting to explode. I tell you, I’m not as worried about the economic downturn nearly as I am about social instability. If someday someone starts a revolt somewhere...”

He went silent, scrolling through his phone. “In our group, the emotions are running high. Every day, someone would complain, ‘My passenger was rude, my fare was too low,’ and before you know it, the whole chat is full of grievances. But really, it’s all because the money just isn’t there anymore.”

“Express delivery, take out delivery, and taxi drivers; we call them the big three, the triathlon. Low-skilled, labor intensive, requires time and physical mobility, like running marathons. More and more people, especially young people, are flowing into these sectors. That also means other industries are getting worse and worse, layoffs after layoffs happening, leaving the young ones unable to find a job.”

“Even our fleet captain, a low level manager in charge of everyone in our fleet, is heeding to the rebellious youth. Most of the times, his only job is to relay the company’s announcements to us through our WeChat group. When he sends a bulletin out, the next second, you’d see a brain of drivers all scolding, cursing at him. Haha! Usually, he’d send a poster or notification from his higher-ups, and then message all of us to say more about it—generic remainders, deadline setting, that sort of standard stuff. Nowadays, before he’s got time to type in a single letter, the curses would drown him out. Honestly, it’s not all not his problem, is it? He’s sending us what Didi told him to. There’s nothing wrong with the bulletins either. Most of them are mundane, like an update of our standard of service—take this box of tissues in front of you, for example, that’s required of us luxury cars by Didi.”

His face lights up in describing the heated group dynamics, yet each time, he returns to a rational conclusion. “We blame the fleet cap on all sorts of things. We call him ‘nothing but the company’s running dog, a street rat, giving himself up for enslavement in exchange for a petty share in their profits.’ He’s no more than an assistant of the company, right? ‘You never consider our wage. You never consider the pay rate. You never care that we don’t make nearly enough. What made you think you’ve got the authority to instruct me on this and that?’ If you think about it, it’s pure negativity in emotions.”

“If there’s money out there to be earned, who doesn’t want to get rid of that negativity? Us drivers are very obedient, you know. You can tell us to do anything if doing so earns us the money. Before Covid, the fleet cap posts a bulletin. Ha! We’d all immediately reply: ‘yes boss. Got it boss.’” Very positive, right?”

“Back then, the fleet caps felt as if they were high above in the company’s administrative structure. They felt powerful. When drivers see them at the airport or other places, drivers run over to chat with them. In the group chat, they click a few times and type in a message or two, and everyone goes ‘yes boss.’ They compete to send the first response. They had money to make. The caps can also help with small problems. But not? What can the caps help with? Everyone’s poor now. We stay silent in the group chat when we’re feeling alright, and lash out on the cap when we aren’t. Our cap’s essentially in his hiding now. He’s silent, except when he has to forward Didi’s messages to us.”

Fading alongside the fleet captains’ authority was the efficiency of Didi’s entire organizational structure. Technological progress and economic stagnation created a unique paradox. “Everyday before leaving the car, we have to shoot and upload photos of it, inside out. There used to be a human worker, sitting on the other side, checking that you’ve met all the requirements for carrying passengers. On the outside, they look for a clean car, its surface intact, no paint peeling off, stuff like that. And then they have regulations for the inside—we have to provide bottled water and tissues for passengers, for example. Now, we’ve got AI, a robot auditing us. This is hugely frustrating because robots are programmed. They’re rigid, not like humans. They score you a bunch of violations when they fail to identify the tissue box, when they mistakenly take a sticker as an inkblot…everything’s a hot mess.”

“There’s no recourse. We’re at the mercy of AI. First violation comes with a warning; the second, a deduction of service points. Beyond that, they stop you from carrying passengers for three days. We can’t appeal.”

“But it doesn’t matter anymore. Nobody cares. It don’t matter whether they take points off of our record because we have so little incentive to work either way. We can’t make much money from work, so what use is there to threaten us with our job?”

Didi has a robust, time-proven incentive system to reward drivers with solid performance. “Didi keeps a record of all its drivers’ service points. In the old times, the system prioritized you when assigning better deals to drivers—the best deals have a pickup location close to your car, a destination where you can pick up new passengers without waiting for long, and a long journey in between so you earn a decent sum at once. In theory, Didi applies the same mechanisms nowadays. But guess what: there are no good deals anymore! For a hundred-mile journey, I earn 350 RMB. I might as well take a few economy deals and make around the same amount. It used to be: the more points you’ve got, the more money you make. Now that the pay rate is so low, no incentive structure works.”

“You get good ratings from a passenger, and you get two points added. Didi’s algorithm ranks you among all drivers in your region. Different drivers have very different service points, so that’s the easy part. The problem is, your price rate is dead, unchangeably low; they can’t rank the passengers and pair good deals with good drivers. My rate got reduced by 1.5 RMB per kilometer—think about that! Let’s say I drive 300 kilometers per day. Multiply that by 1.5, and the difference turns out to be 450 yuan, around half of my daily revenue, and that’s not to mention that this 450 difference is net profit.”

The car stopped abruptly. We arrived at the airport. Forty minutes later, I dragged my suitcase onto a quiet airplane and left this city covered in endless grey.