So to continue the story of my first night out in Dalian. My friend and I ended up going out to a restaurant for a little bit, then decided to head home.
And this is actually where my night begins. Before getting into the cab, I told him where to go, carefully pronouncing each word as it was supposed to be said in Pinyin, and in the proper tone. The cab driver smiled and nodded and motioned for me to get into the cab. Once in the cab, I also showed him the chinese characters of my address. Once again, he smiled and nodded and off we went.
Within a few minutes, I was started to get- not anxious- but puzzled. I knew that the restaurant wasn't so far from where I lived, and yet we were merging onto the highway. However, considering the fact that I had been living in Dalian for 48 hours and this man had most likely lived in Dalian his whole life, I decided to give it a minute.
Five minutes later, I repeated the address. This time, he didn't smile and his eyes showed his confusion. As I was discussing this with him, and by discuss, I mean repeat the pinyin of my address over and over repeatedly, he drove me up into a dark alley next to an empty lot filled with dark, vacant buses.
He kept on driving slower and slower, until I finally shrieked at him to stop, then once again showed him the chinese characters. This time, however, he looked perplexed and than had a fake moment of eureka! This address isn't right! Something that he was perfectly aware of the first time I showed him the same characters. I was left to conclude that either 1) he never had any idea of where the address was or 2) he did, and drove me the opposite was to try to cheat the silly foreigner. Either of these options was enough to send me into a mood best described as, " a murderous rage." That was the point when he decided to pull over to the side of the road, turn off the car, and start calling different people for help with the directions.
As I sat there, seething at the injustice that I should be at home in my bed, but instead was on the side of the road with a lost cabdriver in a bad part of town, I decided it was better to be proactive, because to be honest, I had no faith that the cabdriver would ever find his way to my apartment
That was when I remembered the map of Dalian given to me by my school manager, which had my apartment marked on it. The map had sat, un-opened, in my bag for the past week, but I decided to pull it out. I showed it to the cab driver, he looked at my blankly. I was starting to lose hope, when I suddenly recalled my lesson on map orientation and positioning that I had learned from the Australian Marine I'd met in Nanjing. Miraculously, I remembered what he said and I was able to orientate the map properly, using only the barest memories of the bus routes and the position of the sea in relation to me.
Using this, limited chinese and miming- the cab driver and I were able to find my apartment. I arrived at my apartment an hour and a half after I got into the cab. The cab driver, perhaps feeling guilty, only made me pay 10 RMB- 1.3 dollars.
The next morning when I told my roommate what had happened, her response was, "but weren't you so scared? Alone, by yourself, on the side of an unknown road with a cab driver on a bad side of town." And once she put it that way, it did seem like a frightening scenario- and maybe it was, but my anger kept my fear at bay. Or there is also the possibilitiy that it just wasn't a frightening scenario- it just sounds like one?
Thus started my Dalian cabdriver curse- for the next two days, all three cabs I tried to take ended up taking me to the wrong address- despite saying the proper pinyin and having the characters for all the adresses. Trying to get to Ikea- a 10 minute drive from my apartment- ended up taking longer than it took for me to fly from Jinan to Dalian.
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