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Hi there everyone,
Welcome to visit my personal web page. It came online in December 2005 and I updated it in 22nd of June 2007. This is Wang Ping saying thank you for your visit, I'd like to let you know more information about travel and transfer in Beijing, and hope you should be fun here.
 Taxi and Traffic hereAs you have probably already read about traffic in Beijingin your travel-guide: this is not a happy story! Traffic in Beijing is probably the worst in China. Because there will be 3 million vehicles at the end of June 2007 in Beijing, includes 65.500 public taxis and a lager number of unregistered taxis. You can easily take a public taxi everywhere downtown. The drivers wait at designated spots or drive along the road to find their customers. However, almost none of the drivers speak English. As you will notice from the behaviour of some drivers yourself: not all taxi drivers have had a nice long sleep at night. Most taxis are operated 24hrs a day, in the best case driven by two drivers: one driver works during the day time, another driving during the night. This means the drivers have to work 10-12 hours every day, and they rarely have a weekend off or a holiday.Since most of drivers live far away from the downtown city area, many drivers prefer to work for a full 24 hours, and then take a rest for 24 hours. You might find many regular taxis parking there for driver exchanging, in every morning on your way to the Great Wall at Simatai.I advice when your driver shows symptoms of sleeplessness: just get out of the car.
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I would like to explain you a little about the pricing of these public taxis. Taxi fares in Beijing raise at 2RMB (0.25 dollars) beginning on 30th of June 2006. The initial fare is 10RMB for 3 kilometres, with an additional 2RMB/km till the end of 14th kilometre point. After 14km there is a 50% surcharge per kilometre, meaning 3RMB/km from kilometres onwards. Waiting time is calculated every 5 minutes at the same rate as the taxi/km at that time. During 11:00pm - 6:00am, a 20% surcharge will apply. As you can easily calculate: for short trips the public taxis maybe a good buy, but for longer trips they get quite expensive, and remember-there was a 12hrs traffic jam happened here last year! This explains why we founded the Private Taxi Beijing: the demand for well rested, English speaking taxi drivers servicing longer trips at a fixed price.
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Wang Ping & His FamilyAlmost every customer ask me where I learnt my English. I started learning English when I was in  middle school, and after that I learned English by myself. I tried to learn in collage, but in the eighties of the last century in China,around 3% of high school students only could get a chance learning in universities. I continue learning English every day nowadays as I meet so many foreign people.
Some of my customers wonder where I was born. I was born in Beijing in 1964, my parents and my grandparents were also born in Beijing. As more and more Chinese people are becoming into affluent these days, they should travel abroad, but I have never traveled abroad myself since I have a twin, a boy and a girl. Thanks Godthey are lovely and healthy as well, they will be 6 years old, and will learning in the primary school this September. My wife is accountant with a part time job. So, I'm a real "Beijinger", I love Beijing, because it is a lot different to other modern cities, and I know a lot about its culture.
The Story of Michael SchinkelI have been driving for 12 years, but running Private Taxi&Guide for foreign travellers with my own small car, started 3 years ago. My family have been definitely changed since I met my first foreign customers, in a rainy night in May 2005-Mr.Michael Schinkel, a Dutch and his friend-a French lady. They took my car with the help of a waitress in a restaurant which they finished their dinner. They were surprised when I asked them in English where they wanted to go, and wondered if my car is as same as other taxis. I said: "no, this is a Private Taxi, it's cheaper than others". They told me they were staying in Beijing for 5 days and they just arrived. They would trip to Chengde Mountain Resort by train the next day. I left them a business card printed in Chinese and said I hoped they call me when they needed a taxi again. But I never expect they called me the next morning: they missed their train from Beijing to Chengde. I was asked to drive a 2Days Trip.
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They were very friendly, honest and polite. I will never forget Mr. Michael Schinkel, not only for their rich fare, but also for his much help with my business: He told me that most foreign independent travellers would need a taxi driver who can speak English, and taught me how to use Internet to find more business. I was never online before, you know. He left his email address on our way to the airport, as well as I dropped them off.
I started getting help from Michaelby email, after he returned Netherlands, and chat or email sometimes, nowadays.
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Customers and partnersIn the next weeks, I was recommended to Edouard Schinkel - Michael's brother, anintern who was  working at Siemens (Shanghai), came over to Beijing with his pretty French girlfriend. A little bit later, two German girls Susan (a colleague of Edouard) and Stefanie came over as well, and all of them were very satisfied with my service. I was recommended by internal website to Siemens colleagues, and more and more foreign travellers emailed or called me. They're Dutch, French, German, American, Scottish, Polish, Dominican, Bulgarian, Italian, Denmark, Canadian, Austrian and Singaporean. Most of them are Siemens employees and interns, or relatives of Siemens. Normally, 1-3 persons, some times a family, some times a group. So, some times I have to look for a partner to finish my service together with me. At the moment I have several partners with 5 cars and one minivan.
We like Siemens, and I love Dutch! Sure!!! |
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