Calamity of hailing a cab on Jan 1

Unhappy New Year to you. And me. How many hours of how many New Year nights have you spent staring at a metropolitan horizon, looking for the light? Of a taxi, not anything unimportant like the Answer to Life. I loathe one thing about the whole business of "out with the old and in with the new". Partying on the eve of the annual transition is tainted by the impossibility of a good exit.

There is a diktat somewhere that says it must either snow or be bitterly cold at New Year; inclement weather waits for the countdown and then starts its meteorological malice. And until Stella McCartney does a little black dress in Goretex and Ugg branch out from boots to sheepskin stilettos, or a Chinese designer does an "Evening Occasionwear Glamor Parka" in sequined taffeta, please - no woman can make the transition from party to pavement without an outbreak of fashion-related flu.

Every year I vow: Never again. But New Year is like childbirth. You eventually forget how awful it was. The result of such New Year amnesia: Here I am again on a kerb. Again.

Is there somewhere more promising where we might boost the chances of procuring a taxi, I suggest to my companion. A tipsy headshake comes back; he is distracted by rehearsals of Mandarin enunciation for cab driver he is convinced the deity above will eventually deliver. I think about asking passers-by for the location of a taxi rank. It's what they're there for - passing-by carries social responsibility. They are service providers as soon as they walk past their front door. But waiting for that dream - read English-speaking and sober - passer-by isn't working. There are fewer of those than cabs.

And quizzing any other type of passer-by in Beijing will involve Mandarin charades. Expat websites say this was the most popular party game this year, an ironic twist on the traditional parlor game where players act out a popular expression and everyone else has to guess it. Mandarin charades has three categories: "Is it a book? Is it a film? Is it a life essential to you at that moment?" And how will I mime "taxi rank?" Semi-squatting with my arms out in front, going "vroooom". It might look like a lavatorial emergency, during which I mispronounce the Chinese for constipation and definitely use the wrong tone, when in fact I am attempting to convey occupancy of a car seat, driving, with a frantic expression on my face looking for the relief of a fast exit, but not in the way a "mimee" - the recipient of the gesticulations - might think.

Mandarin charades may be a fun game you can play all year round - even when you don't want to - but some expressions are just too hard to enact. And that is only the "taxi" bit. How will I do "rank"? Wrinkle my nose as if to indicate smell deserving that adjective? Will that feed too directly into previous lavatorial misinterpretation? (Yes). Salute the other person? Salute myself? Risk being taken away by the police for reasons of suspected mental imbalance, although at least that would be a lift to somewhere and a strait-jacket would be an extra layer.

Do the Chinese do New Year resolutions? I shall not allow my current location to impede adherence, normally short-term, to that tradition. My resolution: Petition the Chinese government to license a million new taxis by next New Year. Or stay at home.