White card (taxi)

A white card (Chinese: 白牌) is a citizen-owned automobile in Hong Kong used as an illegal unlicensed taxi. The term is a reference to fake taxi licenses. Actually it refers to the white license plates. Before 1983, taxis in Hong Kong had black license plates, while private cars had white license plates. So using a private car as unlicensed taxis was known as "white license plate" (or translated as "white card") rdf:langString