November 5, 2022

We got off the metro and walked towards the main road beneath the underpass. We called out to a taxi in the middle of a line of cars waiting for the traffic light as we cut across the oncoming lane. I slid towards the car with my belly facedown on an elevated skateboard (it was about the height of a food trolley).

After telling the driver our destination, he asked if we’ve ever been on public transport. He told us that there was a bus line that went exactly where we were headed. My mom asked him how many stops it would take and my brother and I said that she shouldn’t need to count beforehand.

We sat in the taxi ride for a little longer when my aunt brought up how my brother recorded a Chinese cover of a pop song when he was a child. He seemed pretty embarrassed and didn’t want us to continue talking about it. She explained that it was popular back then to fully translate all foreign language songs.

The taxi driver told us he was from Hong Kong.