If it was easy to get a cab in Chengdu, I wouldn’t care whether or not uber existed here, but literally every time I’ve wanted to take a cab it takes at least 10 minutes for a cab to actually stop (they usually just drive by while waving their hands-even when the light is on) and they usually don’t want to take me where I’m trying to go or won’t run the meter and act outraged that I won’t pay 150 RMB to go 10 kilometers. I’ve downloaded didi dache, but don’t really know how it works, so I just use it to look for places that cabs hang out. Do you have to talk to the drivers when you do it?
Is Uber really that fast? If you hail an Uber on the street, how long until it arrives?
I wrote an article describing how Didi Kuaiche works here: Hail a Taxi from Anywhere in Chengdu. It’s worth figuring out. You have to provide a destination, but you don’t have to speak, you can also type in an address. I prefer to type in an address so there’s no chance they can hear from my voice that I’m a foreigner. I have my home and office programmed in Didi Kuaiche so if I’m going to one of those destinations, I just have to hit home or office and it will do everything automatically. It’s usually pretty fast, the only potential annoyances are:
- When drivers a few minutes away agree to come pick you up and other taxis drive by while you’re waiting
- Obnoxious drivers who yell belligerently into the phone trying to locate you
They have a ?? feature which is just like Uber, there are different classes of cars that you can hail, including luxury car, SUV, minivan, etc.