A taxi car-washing place, seen in the not-so far east of the Chinese capital Beijing in 2011. In those days, the mandatory color was yellow, with taxi companies allowed to choose a second color.
The yellow shirt for taxi drivers was, and still is, mandatory as well. This famous shirt-rule came into effect in 2007 in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In 2011, the majority of taxi’s in Beijing were Hyundai Elantra sedans, made locally at Beijing-Hyundai. Here we see a yellow-green and a yellow-blue car, belonging to two different taxi companies.
In China, it is very common that cities choose locally-made cars for their taxi-fleet, using semi-official policy directives for companies, which are very often locally-state owned or partially locally-state owned.
In 2011, the Volkswagen Jetta taxi was already pretty rare in China. Today they are 99% gone. The Jetta was for a long time the most popular taxi in the entire country, manufactured up north by FAW-Volkswagen.
In most cities in China, taxi’s have to go to designated areas to wash, rest, or maintain. Drivers pay a small fee for using the location and water and soap, and they do the cleaning all by themselves.
This is actually quite important as police can fine a taxi driver is his vehicle is deemed not clean enough. Also note the green Volkswagen Bora in the side-mirror of my girlfriend’s (now wife) Changan-Suzuki Swift.