Still Point

Today, I got my Chinese Driver’s License.

First I had to go get a physical. That entailed giving the guy in the doctors suit 12 RMB and signing my name. He wrote out a paper that said my hearing was excellent, I can see perfectly, not colorblind, and in good health. He managed to collect all that information by.. not looking at me and smoking a cigarette and asking me for the 12 bucks.

So then I went into a room with 50 other Chinese people who needed to take the test on a computer. They give the white-man (…me) a stack of paper with 100 questions in the most obscure, broken English available.

Example question: “When you move to front to pass along cross, you need require: A) don’t stop pedestrian first B) continue move front with cautious C) In the PRC all auto-vehicles must obide by the laws”

(No, really, I shit you not.)

I guessed on about half the questions because I could not decipher this Chinese-English code language. Not to mention the questions like, “What does this sign mean?” and they show a sign with Chinese characters on it.

I finished after about 25 minutes, took the test to the front, the lady glanced at the paper, and said, “Hao le.” She quickly pulled out a blue stamp and imprinted “90″ (which, by the way, was the minimum score before failing) on the face of the test, laminated me a license, now I can drive. Un-fuckin-believable. The whole process (which actually took about 4 hours because of the lunch break) cost me $2 USD.