A shared moment with a taxi driver

Yesterday on the way home from work, the taxi driver put on some music. The song was an old Mandarin pop song from Taiwan that was popular in 1990. It was one of my favorite songs at the time, and I remembered it well. I started humming along, then noticed that the driver was humming along as well. Then he noticed that I was humming along. Then we noticed that we noticed each other humming along. Just then the chorus of the song came on. We made eye contact, and burst into song together.

He was surprised that I knew the song. I told him that I was living in Taiwan when it came out. We talked about Mandarin pop music and our favorite singers. Our respective musical tastes overlapped a lot. He said that he preferred songs from the 80s and 90s, because the lyrics captured his emotions. I told him that totally agreed.

It was a person-to-person diplomatic moment. Even though we come from very different backgrounds, we share a common taste in pop music. We talked about our feelings as much as men who don’t know each other are comfortable doing. We made a connection. I don’t have a word to describe the situation that isn’t a cliche like “cool” or “neat,” but it was those things.

This is the song that was playing:

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