Mingjie Cai studied Biology at Nanjing University from 1973 to 1977. He obtained a Master of Science degree from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1981. Following several years of working at the same institute and later in the Department of Biochemistry at Nanjing University as a lecturer, he enrolled into the PhD program of the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University in 1985 and obtained his PhD degree in 1990. From 1990 to 1992, he worked in the Department of Genetics at the University of Washington as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellow. He joined the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Singapore in 1992 as a Principal Investigator. He had been an Associate Professor of the same institute and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the National University of Singapore from 2000. He also served on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (Elsevier, Amsterdam) from 2003. He was unemployed from May 2008 and became a taxi driver in Singapore in February 2009.

When Dr. Cai Mingjie, a lifelong scientist and university professor, lost his job at a leading research institute in Singapore, his world collapsed around him. Despite having published numerous papers and a Stanford PhD, he could not find a suitable job. Disheartened by the global financial crisis, he became a taxi driver, the Singaporean job of last resort. While driving a cab he jotted down notes about his experiences and posted them on his blog, quickly becoming an internet celebrity with close to one million pageviews so far. Experience the real Singapore and join Dr. Cai as he recounts true stories about naïve prostitutes and lecherous johns, abusive customers and kind strangers, violent drivers and heart-wrenching encounters... "This book is not just the story of what it is like to be a taxi driver: It offers snapshots of a Singapore literally on the move, of a restless and dissatisfied population, of people rushing to be somewhere else. - The Straits Times" (Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars)