hanghai's taxis are colorful, unlike New York City's, which are all yellow. Cyan, yellow, white, green, blue, red, dark blue and dark red are the main colours of the taxis in Shanghai and the colors denote different taxi companies. Dark blue and dark red are the colours for the city's hundreds of small and medium taxi companies.

Real taxis have a logo light on the top of the car. Around the driver's seat is a transparent shield protects the driver from robbery. A meter and an illuminated vacancy disk on the dashboard are also necessities for a cab. Without all these things, the taxi is probably unlicensed and you should avoid it, even if the driver solicits you. You have no rights if injured in an unlicensed taxi.

The vacancy disk will help you know which cab is available. When the disk is upright and illuminated showing two Chinese characters -- 空车 -- it means the cab is vacant.

Cyan, yellow, white and green are the taxi colours you will see most frequently, as they are the logo colors of the city's four biggest taxi companies – Dazhong, Qiangsheng, Jinjiang and Bashi.

Fares
The minimum fare is 12 yuan (US$1.76), which covers the first 3 kilometers, and then 2.4 yuan is charged for every additional kilometer. Being stuck in a traffic jam bumps up the bill. Five minutes of waiting time costs the same as a kilometer.

Metro Lines

Reaching almost every corner of the city, covering all the prosperous areas, the Metro is the fastest and most convenient way to move about in the downtown area. There are now ten lines and in December 2007 Shanghai's subway systems overtook Paris as the seventh longest network in the world.

There are stations where several Metro lines meet. An interchange station is a station where you can change for other lines without meeting a ticket barrier, e.g. People's Square Station. A transfer station, however, is one where you have to leave the first line through a ticket barrier and then be charged for another line, e.g. Shanghai Railway Station.

Shanghai transport card holders can get a considerable discount by swiping the card when transferring from one line to another.

The Shanghai Metro, as with elsewhere in the world, is the quickest method to get around a congested metropolis. It's also much cheaper than taxis with maximum fares of 7 yuan per journey. Some special advantages of the Shanghai metro is that it's easy to understand for foreigners due to the simple graph format of its maps, and signs are in both Chinese and Pinyin.

Another special advantage is that it's by far the best way to get across the Huangpu between Pudong and Puxi. Finally it connects both train stations in Shanghai and provides a link to the maglev which goes to Pudong airport.

However, the Metro has its disadvantages. It is extremely crowded in rush hours and Line 1 is crowded in whatever hours. Even the act of getting on and off the trains can be tiresome as people typically don't wait for passengers to disembark before getting on. Also be wary of thieves, both on the train and on the platform, especially when it is extremely crowded.

For more information, please click the link: http://www.shmetro.com/