My China Experience21-Driving

Driving In China

I’ve been here in China three years now. It’s quite nice here but of course there are a few things I miss from back home. Family is a given, they top the list, but there are a few more things. Dunkin Donuts coffee, lunch meat (ham-Genoa salami-bologna-etc), roast beef and English language TV are all on the list, but after family, I miss driving a car most.
I decided to get my Chinese driving license, as China does not accept a USA or International Drivers License, just Chinese. I live in Zhengzhou, a city of 7.5 million people, the capitol of Henan, the country’s most populous province at 100 million people, I assumed many foreigners had gotten a license in past years. I was wrong. There have been only a very few foreigners brave enough (or stupid enough) to join the driving culture here.
It is so difficult to make you understand how “driving” works here. Let me see……….oh, OK. Go outside in your yard and look for an ant hill. I’m sure you all have at least one, especially those real nasty “Fire Ants”. Get a stick and knock a hole in the top of the ant hill. Step back quickly but watch closely. Several thousand ants come running out all at the same time and running in all directions, right, left, up, down, sideways and some ways you can’t imagine how they do that. That’s a pretty good example of driving here. Remember the game of Chicken, where 2 people drove their cars at each other to see who would turn away first? There are 1.3 billion people here, sooooo 1.3 billion divided by 2 = 6.5 million games of Chicken being played at any given time. I’m not kidding. Pedestrians step close to the roadway to try to get a driver to pause a moment. If not, they step closer and closer, into the road as the drivers refuse to stop and swerve around them. That swerving is into the next lane of course, so that other driver slows or momentarily stops. That’s all the pedestrian needs. He now steps in front of that car and will not move. Now others follow. Many others. Now they encroach the next lane and the next, until they get across, not one person but maybe 20 or 50. They keep coming until the drivers creep forward towards the pedestrians closer and closer until THEY hesitate, then the cars all go again. It’s quite a game here. The big intersections have traffic lights. All the secondary intersections do NOT. No traffic light, no Stop sign, no Yield sign….nothing. At traffic lights most vehicles, cars, trucks, buses, stop. I said most, not all. The majority of people here walk or use bicycles for transportation, regular bikes, small electric bike, big electric bikes, truck style bikes, etc, and they do NOT stop, at all, ever, in any direction. It really is a mess and makes a virtual “grid lock”.
Excuse me, I digress. Back to my license. I looked on a national web site here in China and found that bigger cities offer the written test in English if you choose. I spoke to a good friend of mine here and she told me I need to take a translator or a Chinese person to actually take the test for me as it’s only in Chinese. I brought all the paper work the Internet and several friends told me I needed. There were hundreds of people there for their license, ALL Chinese. I was the only foreigner. I was lead by my friend to a small office in another building. First to the second floor, not there, so off to the fourth floor. We could not find it so back to the first floor. Finally he calls him and seems it’s on the fourth floor after all. We go back up to the fourth floor again. My friend had “friends” there in high places, so I was lucky enough to skip all the lines and go right to front of the lines. Little by little we managed to go station to station completing what was needed. We get to the final station before we take the written test, and the man there is looking at my paperwork very close. He is talking to my friend in Chinese, and no one is smiling. I’m getting worried now. Finally they tell me what’s wrong and it seems I’m missing a paper after all. It’s a paper from my local police station attesting to the fact that I really do live in China, in Zhengzhou.
Back at my apartment I called Cindy at our Foreign Affairs Office and ask her to help get this paper. I tell her I need it today because I have another appointment there the next morning. An hour later she calls me and tells me to get to the police station quickly and bring a student as a translator. They close in 45 minutes so I have to hurry. After calling 5 students I find one that is free and he comes running. We get to the police station and get the paper just as they close. Next morning I go to meet my friend but he has an important meeting and cannot go. He sends his young helper instead. He assures me he can do this so we go. After close examination, I finally get approved to take the written test. We go to the test room and there are 100 people at computers taking the test. I’m allowed to bring a translator, as it seems the written test is only in Chinese, not English as their web site said. At the computer I see we have 100 questions to complete in 45 minutes. My translator has to be pretty fast. We hit the start button and the timer starts. He reads the question….slowly. I ask him what it says and he doesn’t know how to translate it. He grabs his cell phone and calls someone for help. He gats the answer and hits the button for question #2. The timer reads 40 minutes left. Five minutes to get one question. WAY too slow. We decide to let him read and answer the questions. Its faster that way and he assures me he can do it. He is going very slow and calling someone every other question. I finally ask him if he has a license of his own and he says no. My heart skipped a few beats. The test ends and it seems “we” scored 63. Oh, did I tell you….we need a 90 to pass. Now I’m angry. All this time and trouble and we failed badly. My helper is real worried. He sees I’m angry and his failing made him lose face. He is upset too. He tells me to sit here and wait. He runs away, returning in 15 minutes with a stranger, a guy about 22. We ask to take the test again and tell them I need TWO translators this time. We take it again and get 93 this time……YAHOO. I, er, I mean “we” all passed. Now we have to back to the third floor to get the actual license. We start THAT process and are told we have to pay first. I offer the money and she refuses it. Guess where the cashier is? Yup, FIRST floor. Down we go, pay the money and back up again. I’m beginning to feel like a mountain goat. I show the receipt and try again for my license. She puts the blank license in her printer and starts to fill in the information, when all of a sudden she stops and looks at the printer. Her computer will not accept my English name. I must have a Chinese name. Oh my God…..what’s next? My friend tells her my translated to Chinese is Jo-sa-fu, and they write it in Chinese. It worked. Twenty more minutes and we are done. I leave with a license in my hand and a tired smile on my face.
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