10: miles per hour

In New York, the taxi drivers are particular on details, probing you on the exact time and place you decided that you wanted to use their services. During the ride, you take a call from your mother and they proceed to ask for your opinions on family. In Toronto, you look like a tourist, so they give you the “Toronto is so much better than Vancouver” speech. In Shenzhen, however, the taxi drivers do not seem to favor small talk very much at all. Instead, they sneak peeks at you from the rear-view mirror. It’s a delicate task—their gazes must shift rapidly back and forth to maintain the delicate standard of what seems to be at least 70 miles per hour. The reasoning is a simple one: faster speeds are directly correlated with more business. “Put on your seatbelt,” the man taking us from Coastal City to Shenzhen Bay finally says, “The fine is expensive.”