The Long Awaited, Much Anticipated Residency Visa!

It's here. After months of waiting, delays, extra fees, even getting stranded in Korea, and various other twists and turns, the road finally ended with a bored looking Chinese government official handing me my passport with a bright and shiny Chinese Residency Visa. For one whole year, I do not have to worry about visas, entry/exit duration, registration with police stations, physicals, forms, none of that. I am now an official resident of the People's Republic of China. The funny thing is I have more documentation to show that I am a resident of this country than I have to show that I am a citizen of the United States of America. I took off this morning about ten or so, and went to the Haidian district for lunch, and as I left the restaurant, I saw an empty taxi who nearly caused an accident braking suddenly when I waved it down. Let me go off topic for a minute and explain that the Chinese language is extremely complicated, beyond worrying about those blasted tones of voice which change meaning, you have to know what exact vocabulary to use when speaking. So anytime I am able to learn a bit, I am pretty happy. Today, I was able to have a full conversation in Mandarin with the cabbie on the way to the government building where I got my residency card. So in order to gloat here, I'm going to post the conversation.

Driver: 你好。 (Hello)
Me:你好。(Hello)
Driver: 在哪里？(Where to?)
Me: 这个地址 (This address. Pointing to the address in Chinese on the instructions I had)
Driver: 没有问题。 我知道那个地方哪里。(OK. No problem.)
Me: 劳驾。 愿我问您问题。 您是否讲英语？(Excuse me, can you speak any English?)
Driver: 稍微。 您能否讲英语？(A little. Do you speak English?)
Me: 是。 我是美国人。 我在北京大学教英语。 (Correct. I am an American. I teach English at Peking University.)
Driver: 您在北京大学教英语？ 非常好。(You teach English there? Very good.)

a little later on...
Driver: 这在不错那里。 我将停止这里。(It is right here. I will stop here.)
Me: 谢谢。 我欠多少您？(Thank you. How much do I owe you?)
Driver: 三十六 元. 谢谢。 有一个早晨好。 (36 kwai. Thank you. Have a good day.)

After getting my visa and still gloating on the residency permit and being understood by a native speaker, I got in another taxi to go home and this one wasn't as fun...

Me: 你好。 请采取我这里。
Annoyed Driver: 我嘲笑您的衰弱尝试讲我的语言，您傻的外国人! ( He spoke way too fast and with too much of a slurred Beijing dialect for anything close to comprehension, but I think it was something along the lines of "Haha! I laugh at your feeble attempts to speak my language, you silly foreigner!")