A taxi in east China's Jinan has become a special place for people to share their hopes or thoughts, as its driver decorates the cab ceiling with passengers’ notes written on sticky paper.

Zhou Wenchang, the taxi driver, enjoys people's amaze at seeing the notes when they ride his taxi for the first time. Layers of colorful stickers on the cab ceiling and writings from numerous passengers on the paper all suggest that this is not an average cab ride.

The idea of having passengers leave behind messages on stickers occurred to Zhou in 2021, when the epidemic made his business hard, Zhou wrote messages of love to his wife and put them on the sun visor, to remind him that he has a loving and caring family behind him.

After he wrote stickers for a while, Zhou began to have passengers asking him if they could also write down their thoughts and hopes, so he had prepared pens and stickers for passengers to do so. And he also named his cab “Romantic Taxi” and pasted the note on the front cover.

In the two years that followed, a ride on Zhou's car has become a journey to warm the heart of a passenger, through communication with people unknown. Some have left their best wishes, and others their messages of encouragement to themselves, and strange fellow passengers who happen to take the seat.

For Zhou, the notes also document many joyful encounters.

"This was written by a big brother from Weihai I picked up at the Jinan West Railway Station. He told me he was engaged in seafood business and came to Jinan for business. He wrote 'stars will shine on everyone on the way, regardless who he might be,'" Zhou said.

Zhou exchanged contacts with the passenger, whose name is Yuan Long, and promised to pick him up again at the railway station the next time Yuan comes.

"I wrote that a year ago. At the time there were few people around and there was little business. So I thought I should go to the provincial capital Jinan for some business opportunities, see if I could take a big order. However hard, I should strive. So I wrote that to encourage myself," Yuan recalled at the sight the note he wrote in Zhou's taxi.

Yuan said since then he had worked hard, not to let go even the smallest orders, and endured times when there was no business for weeks. Eventually, Yuan has seen the recovery of the dining industry. He has newly hired a dozen workers for the ongoing peak season of the Spring Festival sales, handling tens of thousands kilograms of seafood every day.

Looking back at his note left on Zhou’s taxi, the second part of which reads "Time will reward those who have striven," Yuan said he still believes what he wrote.

"So long as you work hard, so long as you hold on, you will surely make it," Yuan said.

As another Spring Festival is around the corner, passengers are sharing their new hopes, along with a new year of stories, on Zhou's taxi.

"I want to say to my daughter, eat well, sleep well and enjoy growing up happily," said one passenger.

"Good business, good appetite," another passenger read out his note.

"Go China in 2023," said yet another passenger.

Driving on the road, occasionally Zhou would lower the driver side window and hear the notes flutter in the wind.

"They make sound in wind – that's the sound of dreams," Zhou said.