Reporter Frank Langfitt was no stranger to China when he started the job of NPR Shanghai correspondent in 2011. Langfitt had worked for a newspaper in Beijing from 1997 to 2002, but the country he returned to on this new assignment was vastly different from the one he had lived in before.
The intensity of growth had slowed; government corruption had increased; and growing social inequity was palpable. As he started to report on what he saw, Langfitt found that his stories were missing the heart and depth he needed, so he came up with a creative idea: offer free taxi rides in exchange for conversation.
He outfitted a Toyota Camry with a sign in Mandarin that translated to “Free Loving Heart Taxi” and started to pick up passengers. He met a cast of characters ranging from a pajama salesman named Chen to an investment banker named Ashley who shared their lives and stories with him in rides across the city. He continued to develop those relationships over the course of years and documents the conversations and insight in his new book “The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China” (Public Affairs/2019).
'Chinese people are very pragmatic. As long as they feel things are going reasonably well economically they will put up with a lot. No matter how much repression there is, these days look vastly better than what life was like under Mao,'- Frank Langfitt, NPR's London Correspondent
Host Frank Stasio talks with NPR London Correspondent Frank Langfitt about what conversations in a taxi illuminate about the most populous country in the world. Langfitt will be in conversation with WUNC General Manager Connie Walker at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh Wednesday, June 12 at 7 p.m.