Frank Langfitt - The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China

Frank Langfitt achieved what generations of visitors to China only dreamed of doing: He devised an ingenious way to burrow into everyday life, and he came back with stories that are humane, candid, fast-paced, and compulsively readable. The Shanghai Free Taxi gives you the marrow of todays China in all its kindnesses and cruelties and wonders and absurdities.

E VAN O SNOS , author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China and National Book Award Winner.

Driving in China is hard. Getting average Chinese people to open up about their feelings and opinions is even harder. In The Shanghai Free Taxi Frank Langfitt does both at the same time, driving a cab in the flagship city of a country in transition. Challenging to report but easy to read, this book reveals Chinas true transition: a profound search for identity in the world at large.

P ETER H ESSLER , New York Times bestselling author of Country Driving, Oracles Bones and River Town

Frank Langfitts stint as a taxi driver collecting tales of modern China has created a rollicking, delightful read. Enchanting.

M EI F ONG , author of One Child

The Shanghai Free Taxi is a delightful, poignant, and revealing book. In his role as impromptu, volunteer chauffeur in Shanghai, Frank Langfitt got to see inside the lives of Chinese families of all backgrounds and social classes, and from many parts of the country. The result is a vivid look at the contradictory dreams, achievements, heartbreaks, and possibilities of modern China.

J AMES F ALLOWS , author of Our Towns and China Airborne

A cleverly conceived, well-executed book by an engaging and empathetic storyteller. Langfitt offers up an appealing mix of humorous and poignant tales featuring individuals from different backgrounds who share just one common trait: all are struggling to find their places in and make sense of an era when their city, their country, and the world at large have been undergoing complex and often confounding transformations.

J EFFREY W ASSERSTROM , coauthor of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know

By creating a free taxi and offering free rides, veteran NPR reporter Frank Langfitt takes us on a journey across China and into the soul of todays Chinese civilization. We learn how a wide cross section of Chinese people live and think as the author provides an up-close view of their fears and aspirations and the forces that shape their lives in ways good and bad. I have lived in China for thirty years, and this book gave me new insights and brought me to places I have never been. Truly unique and compelling.

J AMES L. M C G REGOR , chairman of APCO Worldwides greater China region and author of No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers and One Billion Customers

The Shanghai Free Taxi presents a unique, kaleidoscopic view of Chinese society. Characters in this book open up, talking freely and truthfully in a way unimaginable elsewhere under the oppressive regime. It is a must read for anyone trying to gain rare and insightful glimpses into that complicated country.

Q IU X IAOLONG , author of Shanghai Redemption and nine other Inspector Chen novels

Frank Langfitt writes with the streetwise eye of a cabbie and the analytical mind of a foreign correspondent. This is todays China as it gossips, gripes and moans; strives, struggles and overcomes.

P AUL F RENCH , author of City of Devils and Midnight in Peking

For Julie, Katherine, and Chris