Imagethief, who has been subjected to the depravities of Beijing's taxi drivers more times than he cares to remember, was elated to see the following stern article from Xinhua this weekend:

Smelly taxis warned to tarnish Beijing's image in 2008
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-03-04 09:14

Some Beijing taxi drivers should take it seriously the smell inside their cabs, which may tarnish the city's image in the 2008 Olympic Games, a political advisor has said.

Shi Xiangpeng, who came from Hong Kong to attend the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said on the basis of his own experience that about one third of the taxis in Beijing were smelly.

"Sometimes I could smell unbearable stink once I got into the cab, but was afraid of being too rude to get off immediately. So I had to roll down the windows, regardless of how cold it was outside," said Shi, a CPPCC member who visited Beijing frequently.

He attributed the odor to the bad habits of some drivers from the suburbs of Beijing. Since they live far away from the downtown areas where they can do more business, they sometimes sleep and have meals, with onion or garlic, inside the cars, Shi said.

Some drivers don't bath for a long time and some smoke in their cabs, he added.

He called on taxi drivers to pay more attention to their personal hygiene and try to keep a clean and pleasant scent inside the cars.

A smelly cab, though a trivial thing, may impair the country's international image when Beijing hosts the Olympic Games next year, as it's not polite to the guests, he said.

Statistics show that Beijing has 2.9 million registered motor vehicles, including about 67,000 taxis.

Well, if only one third are stinky that's still a 60% chance of a refreshingly odorless taxi ride. However, it seems to Imagethief that esteemed Mr Shi, who's nostrils have clearly been softened by years of easy living in Hong Kong, has lost site of priorities. Were Imagethief to rate the things that Beijing's taxi drivers need to improve, here is how he would rank them:

  1. Crazy driving, including an alarming tendency to get into emotional mobile phone calls while threading traffic at high speed.
  2. Total lack of rear-seat seatbelts and often unusable front ones. (And a tendency to discourage seatbelt use by giving you that annoyed "What? You don't trust my driving?" look when you start to buckle up.)
  3. An increasingly high rate of total unfamiliarity with Beijing's major landmarks. I've had to explain Wangfujing. If London's taxi drivers have "the knowledge", then many of Beijing's taxi drivers only have "the fog".
  4. For those who do know the landmarks, a total lack of creativity on how to approach them during peak traffic periods. You'd think that the only roads in Beijing were the ring roads, Chang'an Jie, Dongzhimen, Gongti, and the airport expressway.
  5. The tendency of the remaining, old Citroens to vent their exhaust directly into the cabin. Carbon monoxide doesn't have a smell, but burning motor oil sure does.

Also, really, unless they get Beijing's appalling air sorted out, it won't matter if Beijing's taxi drivers subsist on a diet of clove oil and Clorets during the Olympics. It will stink inside the taxis anyway, and Beijing's image will be thoroughly tarnished.

Note: It seems to me that Xinhua's headline (or it might be a China Daily rewrite) is missing an adverbial "not". Or it may be that it is a uninentional slip that reveals a sinister plot to discredit Beijing during the Olympics. But I've taken my meds today so I am going to go with the less paranoid interepretation.

Thanks to Hose-B for the tip.