Shanghai Street View: Irrational Appetites
I’ve refrained from writing before about Shanghai’s ongoing brouhaha over taxi apps, mostly because it seemed too local and didn’t have any broader significance beyond the unruly adoption of a new technology. But Shanghai’s latest move forbidding cabbies from taking new orders while they still have passengers seems worth writing about, as it speaks to a broader issue that looks like simple greed at first but is really a much larger part of the modern Chinese psyche.
The issue I’m talking about is the urge among some Chinese to uncontrollably amass wealth and seek new business, even when they don’t need it or their actions are cause inconvenience to themselves and others. This tendency has become a regular fixture of modern life in China.
It shows up most visibly in newspaper headlines about corrupt officials who amass ridiculous sums of money and property they could never possibly use. But it’s also a regular presence in everyday life, as reflected by this latest wrinkle in the sudden embrace of taxi apps by the city’s thousands of cabbies.
The controversy first burst into the headlines a couple of weeks ago when a growing number of taxi drivers were refusing to pick up normal passengers on the street, preferring to take people who booked rides online. The sudden new preference was fueled by financial incentives from the taxi app developers, who drew on resources from their cash-rich backers, Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent (HKEx: 700).
That instance was clearly a case of greed, as the cabbies could get a few extra yuan for each fare they booked through a taxi app. That prompted the city to ban the use of such apps during peak hours, to ease complaints that it was suddenly impossible to find a cab during those times.
But this latest controversy is much more subtle, and saw the city this week forbid drivers from using taxi apps to book new fares while they were still carrying passengers. The issue was partly technical, since a new unified online booking system being rolled out by the city and the 2 biggest app developers didn’t prevent cabbies from booking new fares while they were still carrying passengers.
But from a more psychological standpoint, this unbridled passion by many Chinese to try to get new business, even when they are still working on a current job, is quite common today. I sometimes see it in restaurants, where a waiter or waitress will simply walk away if I’m ordering too slowly to go and help someone calling from a nearby table.
On a recent trip to Harbin, I was quite surprised to see that many taxis already engage in a similar practice, stopping on the road to pick up new passengers before they’ve delivered current ones to their destination. My friend from Harbin informed me that this practice was quite common, making it nearly impossible to find an empty cab in the city.
This kind of behavior looks irrational to many westerners, who can’t understand such an uncontrollable urge to always be looking for new wealth and business opportunities even when doing so is unnecessary and causes inconvenience. A couple of years ago after headlines emerged about a corrupt Guangdong official dubbed “Uncle House” because of his fondness for collecting dozens of apartments, I remember wondering why a person could possibly want to own so many homes.
The answer lies in the huge changes that have occurred in China over the last 25 years, transforming the nation from a place where people lived in cramped homes and survived on basic diets to one where everyone can live much more comfortably. Despite that change, many people – especially those who grew up in more difficult times – still maintain a certain “hunger” mentality. That leads them to always feel unsatisfied regardless of their wealth, leading to the kind of irrational behavior that manifests itself in so many facets of daily life.
My own grandmother was similar, after growing up in the Great Depression of the 1930s when simple things like food and jobs became precious commodities. As a result, she always looked for bargains and would take home any leftover food whenever we went out to eat, even though she had more than enough money to live very comfortably in her older age.
This latest taxi app brouhaha will inevitably die down over the next few weeks, bringing an end to this strange but colorful chapter in the city’s history as it embraces new technologies in its bid to become a major financial center. But it will be much harder to get rid of the older hunger mentality, which will linger for years in the minds of people who grew up in a far less prosperous Shanghai from the modern city of today.
