It was Friday night and I was standing in line. No, not at the hottest night club in Shanghai - I was waiting behind ~200 people for a taxi in the Suzhou train terminal.

It's strange what kind of people you see waiting in queue at midnight: three person families from the countryside carrying large produce bags with all their belongings inside, trendy guys with dyed longish hair, skinny jeans and sleek luggage, middle aged men in a flock all dressed in drab gray and black. There was a little girl, too. She was by herself. She wore a pink jacket and a cheap pink plastic headband to match. She carried a plastic cup from KFC and asked, no, charmed money out of the people waiting in line. She worked the crowd like a young Richard Dawson from the old Family Feud. To all the girls, she called them "美女," which translates roughly to something like "beautiful woman" or "sexy lady." She told all the men how handsome they are. Sometimes she sang a song. Someone slipped her a 10 dollar bill. She was very successful. She also looked no more than 6 years old.

I couldn't help but wonder what this little girl was doing. Obviously, she was making money. But she couldn't have been making money by herself - who was she working for? Was it her parents? What kind of parents would make their toddler work at this hour of the night? It was midnight, any 6-year-old should have been in bed for hours by now.

So when she came around to my side of the line and asked for money, I asked her what she needed money for. She seemed to have an answer prepared already as she pulled out some beef jerky from her front pocket and loudly exclaimed: "For snacks of course!" She was so adorable that everyone chuckled and gave her money. I did, too.

If I was a good investigative journalist I would have tracked down the people she was working for, uncovered a large-scale kidnapping ring who turn kids into street beggars, defeated this underground mafia, alerted the police, and saved the lives of countless children. But I didn't, I got in a taxi and was on my way to grandma's house. Only later, did I find out that the right(?) thing to do is to not give them any money in order to discourage adults from using children as tools to make money. The same situation occurs in many parts of China, India, and I'm sure it occurs in many developing countries as well.

So there really isn't an ending to my story. I wasn't the hero and I did not save the day. But I will leave you with a little lesson I learned traveling through China alone at night. When I got off the train in the middle of the night, I knew that all public transportation would have been shut off, so the only option in mind was to take a taxi. As soon as I stepped off the platform, a middle aged woman stopped me asking if I needed a taxi. I was just about to say yes when my gut instinct told me to walk away. Another man stopped me to offer me a taxi, then a third. These people are very aggressive! So I put on my New York face and speed walked away. Later, on the line for taxis, I asked the guy in front of me why he would rather wait for 30 minutes on this line than take those "taxi pimps" up on their offer. He said that those cars are "黑车," unlicensed and unregulated in any way. They will take you on the highway, loop for hours and overcharge you, some instances of kidnapping have even happened with these "black taxis."

So, when you've arrived somewhere in the middle of the night. Resist the convenience of "黑车," and wait for a regular taxi. Next up, some posts about survival Chinese in Shanghai!