Easy your life.

Update History

29 April 2010

Licensed To Kill

I started driving when I was 15. I started driving legally at 16. About a year before I left my home country, my driver’s license expired. I renewed it as was the fashion of the day. But the DMV would not give me a new license because I was trying to get a commercial license at the time. Why I was trying to get a commercial license remains a mystery to this day. I am simply not the type and would have never fit in with any of my colleagues had I gotten such a job. But I passed the written test and had passenger and air brake endorsements. All I needed was to take the actual driving test, which required driving an actual commercial vehicle. Since the commercial license was still pending, they would not give me a new regular license. The thinking being that the commercial license outranks the regular license so who needs both and why should the DMV spend the money. Even though I was the one paying for them. Instead, I got a little piece of paper that told any interested law enforcement types that my license was indeed current. This paper was only valid for 30 days so I had the pleasure of going to the DMV every 30 days to get another little piece of paper.

Then I left the country and stopped getting the little pieces of paper. But I took my expired but not really expired license with me.

You can get an international license around here if you have a valid license from wherever you are from. When I started driving Boss Lady’s car during my first year, she suggested I might want to get one. My problem was that my valid license said that it expired and it seemed unlikely that any Chinese bureaucrat would believe my story. Especially in English.

An international license is only valid for the first 30 days or six months or year that foreigners are here. Which time limit depends on where you get your information. Foreigners who have been here beyond that time are expected to get a local license and anyone who drives with an international license is actually driving illegally. I eventually reached all of those stages without getting an international license. Getting a local license proved to be difficult since the nearest government office was a good hour drive away and only open on weekdays. I worked every weekday and could not possibly get there and back in the time allotted. Boss Lady also did not want me to drive her car there since I would be driving illegally to the office where people become legal drivers. That may seem reasonable, but she had no qualms about letting me drive her car illegally just about anywhere else.

Eventually I came across the local police while I was driving illegally and discovered that it was much easier to be a foreign driver than to have all the right paperwork anyway. I soon lost interest and no one noticed or cared.

When I moved in with Pi Chi, I started driving her car, but we never really talked about how illegal that is. I try to let her do most of the driving anyway.

Then I got a job that is about 45 minutes from home. Driving proved to be the only way to get there. So I did. At that point I had driven several different vehicle types all over the place without incident and never really thought much about it. When you are surrounded by fatally reckless drivers who would willingly drive over their own grandmothers to get home five seconds sooner, not having a little card seems trivial.  

But then I might have up and got me a stalker. The details about that are still a little hazy and I have yet to decide how to approach the subject in writing. I am sure I will type up something sooner or later. But it quickly became obvious that I should have a driver’s license. Experience has made me impressively skilled at avoiding the endless obstacles on the roads, and if I were a lesser driver I would have been hit by countless people by now. But even the best driver in the world can do little if someone is deliberately trying to damage their car. The local rule is that any unlicensed driver is at fault in any accident regardless of who actually hit whom. According to Pi Chi. So if someone went out of their way to try to hit me and I could not avoid it, I would have to pay heavy fines, I would have to pay what is really just extortion money to the person who hit me, and Pi Chi’s license would be suspended for allowing an unlicensed driver to drive her car.

So I asked the Internet how one goes about getting such a thing around here. The Internet was as useful as a jar of tomatoes on a cactus farm. It lied to me. As it so often has.

With time and the great patience for which I have always been known, I found that the process is simple, if not complicated.

Step 1: Travel to the only city where the tests can be taken in English. This would likely require spending the night since government offices are usually open in the morning and the train never leaves early enough to get there on time. I was confident that I could take the driving test in Chinese but thought that taking the written test in Chinese would be stupid.

Step 2: Fill out a form. This is in Chinese, but that does not bother me since most of the forms I fill out are in Chinese.

Step 2a: Get the form stamped by the appropriate people. An unstamped form is like Wyoming. Pretty to look at but functionally useless.

Step 3: Get a medical test. I get tested medically every year so I already knew how half-assed it would be. This particular medical test is to see if you can stand without falling over and have all of your given extremities. There is also a vision test that has nothing to do with driving.

Step 3a: Get the medical test papers stamped. See above.

Step 4: Give the properly stamped form and medical test, expired foreign driver’s license, passport, resident ID card, two visa-sized photos and cash to the woman at the counter. It is always a woman.

Step 4a: Make sure she stamps the form and medical test. 

Step 5: Take the written test. In “English”.

Step 6: If you pass the written test, make sure the guy stamps the form, and come back in three months to take the driving test. If you fail the written test, you can come back in seven days and take it again.

Step 7: Take the driving test. Make sure that guy stamps the form, and take all of the paperwork to the woman at the window and make sure she stamps all of the forms. If you fail the driving test, you can come back in seven days and take it again.

Step 8: Be sure to renew your license before it expires or you will have to go through the entire process again.

I tried to make an appointment but found that appointments are not necessary. Except for everything beyond taking the written test. I was ready to pack my bags and get it done when Pi Chi told me that I could take the English version very close to home. I found this hard to believe since everything on the Internet told me otherwise. But I did it her way just to humor her, fully expecting to do it my way later.

She took the day off and drove me to the government office. This was unusual and I still do not know why she did. Perhaps like Boss Lady she did not want me to be seen driving her car. What was not unusual was that we arrived much later than we should have because of a communication issue. The test can only be taken at a certain time and it was fast approaching. She had been told that I could take the medical test at the same office. This was false. We had to drive to the nearest authorized clinic when I was sure we would not have enough time to get all the stamps. The clinic was a typically filthy little building where I would not be caught dead with any medical needs. But they were qualified to see if I had all of my arms and legs. Then there was the vision test.

I do not have what one might call great eyesight. I come from a family of relatively blind people. But I did not get my first glasses until I was 24 years old. I still have them. My eyes are weaker than they were when I was 24, but I only wear glasses to drive and watch movies. I never wear them around the house. I cannot wear them at the computer. I wear them during vision tests. I need them to read the Snellen chart.

But I live in a country where 95% of everybody wears corrective lenses. And there is no alphabet. They use different tests and there does not seem to be any standardization. The test in question was unusual in that it would have been better without glasses. There was a point where my score was a judgement call and the woman behind the counter went ahead and scored it in my favor. Chinese people will often cheat on meaningless things, like tests to determine if a person is too blind to operate potentially fatal machinery. 

Stamped medical report in hand, we rushed back to the government office just in time to get it stamped and go to the testing room. I was still unconvinced that it would be in English. Especially since this was a small office and there are not many foreigners in the neighborhood.

The test was in English, more or less. Mostly less. I passed. I had to read some of the questions repeatedly. I guessed at about a quarter of them. I have since read the questions and answers and still do not understand some of them. It is not that the questions are difficult. It is that they were obviously translated by someone who does not understand basic rules of English grammar and spelling. Fortunately, I live and work with such people and no longer look twice at sentences without pronouns, articles, conjunctions, verbs or nouns.

After lunch we were supposed to come back for the driving test. The Internet repeatedly told me that there was a three month wait between tests, ostensibly to learn how to drive. There is even a flow chart in the government office with the same information. But both tests can be taken on the same day. What was even better was that once all the paperwork had all the correct stamps, we went to the woman behind the counter and she printed up my license right then and there. She glued one of my visa photos to a piece of paper and laminated everything. It is unimpressive and expires in three months, but at least now when I am inevitably hit by another car it will not be my fault. Assuming the police listen to my side of the story rather than just go with whatever one of their own kind says.

My license expires in three months because it is only good as long as I have a resident card. Even though I took all the same tests and have all the same stamps on the same forms as the locals, licenses held by foreigners are only valid while their resident cards are valid. Those are generally only valid for one year. So we have to renew our driver’s license every year while the locals have to renew theirs every six years. Even though my resident card actually expires in four months, it expires in three since that is when my passport expires. The resident card is only good as long as I have a passport. So when I get my new passport I will have to get a new resident card and then I can renew my new driver’s license. But since my resident card will expire one month after I get it, so will my license. In 2010 I will have to pay for three resident cards and three licenses. Yet the one passport costs more than everything else combined.




3 comments:

Ken Berglund said...

Driving tests are a big fat waste of time. Chien Yu got her license, and she hit a tree while the instructor was with her.

美國人 said...

And how many times did she fail the American test?

Ken Berglund said...

She failed the American test 3 or 4 times, and also hit a tree. She still got her license, though.

Most Frequently Used Labels

Most important for honor to making drive with eye close (7) How can it be an accident when they drive like assholes on purpose? (3) Let your family get their own dreams to the reality (3) Police don’t ask me how I feel – I feel fined (3) When you travel to a city with a rich culture and history try to visit its theme parks (3) And I ask myself why were there no strippers at my wedding (2) Get out the way old Dan Tucker (2) Holy Mother tramples the heads of the Earth fire dragon (2) I hate the fact that I need an electronic device in my life (2) I was tired of walking anyway (2) It is indeed like rain on your wedding cake (2) No colors were harmed in the taking of these photographs (2) What the Zagat guide doesn’t tell you (2) Why is not now if it fight? (2) And they don't even hold a grudge (1) Aucune couleur dans la fabrication de ces photgraphs n'a été blessée (1) Brother can you spare a thousand dimes (1) Castle Of The King Of The Birds (1) De Cultuur van Amsterdam is de belangrijkste van Nederland (1) Does one person really need 500 shoes? (1) Dorénavant je ne parlerai pas même Français (1) Everything I know about right and wrong I learned from M*A*S*H (1) From Genesis to Revelation in one run-on sentence (1) Hast du etwas Zeit für mich - Dann singe Ich ein Lied für dich von Wien und Österreich und das sowas von sowas kommt (1) He doesn't care too much for money since money can't buy him love (1) I am tired of typing tiny dirt farm village (1) I knew there was a reason I never go to Dallas (1) I participate in all your hostility to dogs and would readily join in any plan of exterminating the whole race. – Thomas Jefferson to Peter Minor 1811 (1) I think I saw Walt Disney’s frozen head in the popcorn line (1) If I were a half decent photographer anything I shot in Africa would make you say Great Mbleka - this place is awfuckingtastic (1) If Jesus exists then how come he never lived here (1) If Nelson Mandela exists then how come he never lived here? (1) If Rodney King lived here he’d still be alive today (1) If you wish to be starting some thing you have got to be starting some thing - I say if you wish to be starting some thing you have got to be starting some thing (1) If you’ve seen one crowded polluted stinking town… (1) It is make unluck to give a shit (1) It is super and strong to kill the wound dint (1) It’s actually a pretty enormous world after all (1) Keine Farben wurden im nehmen dieser Fotos geschädigt (1) Me no like (1) Most greatest blog post is ever was (1) NOT ALLOW (1) Never trust a man who can only spell a word one way (1) No humans were harmed in the taking of these photographs (1) Not counting the last one (1) Old people got no reason (1) Peace and easy feelings (1) Peter Brown never called me (1) Planes and trains and boats and buses characteristically evoke a common attitude of blue (1) Probably the best time I have ever had at one of my favorite places in the world (1) Red is the color that my baby wore and what's more it's true - yes it is (1) Slap tjips - jy maak my nou sommer lekker skraal mos (1) Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance (1) Suicide is Painless but booking trips at the last minute around here is a pain in the ass (1) The day the music died (1) The lingering acrid scent of $5 whores never impresses the little lady back home (1) The one about my first trip to Amsterdam which doesn’t really say anything about my first trip to Amsterdam (1) The woman who will be the mother of my illegitimate children just as soon as I get that time machine fixed (1) They might as well be dead when the rain comes (1) Think about how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are stupider than that (1) Those godless French bastards never once offered me any vodka (1) Tiny metal rods (1) To boldly be our guest a long long time ago where no man has gone before under the sea (1) Unfortunately to get to nature you have to go through civilization (1) We’ll kill the fatted calf tonight so stick around (1) What good is a used up world and how could it be worth having? (1) Who is this Red Rose that just walked in the she hot stuff (1) Why Julia Child never lived here (1) You make kill we make kill so all same ok (1) Your lateral cuneiform is full of eels (1) scenic Bali (1) spellcheck this (1)

All content © 2004-2013

myfreecopyright.com registered & protected






















I have no qualms about disseminating creative works for the public benefit when the author is duly credited, but if you use any of the writing or photography contained herein and try to pass it off as yours, that just shows you are a big pussy who is too lazy to come up with your own word usements or shoot your own digital paintings. You should be ashamed of your dipshittery.