The short march to my Chinese driver's license
On the outskirts of Beijing sits the Motor Vehicle Administration department, located at the east Fourth Ring Road, near the southwestern edge of the Shibalidian South Bridge. It's a place most foreigners never visit, unless they want a Chinese driver's license.
I was given a review book composed of 1,317 questions. About half are multiple-choice questions, while the other half are right or wrong review questions. One hundred of these questions will be on the test, and you have 45 minutes to answer all of them. You must answer at least 90 percent correctly.
On my scheduled day I arrived to a crowded room filled with people of various ages and nationalities. The test comes in nine languages, Chinese, English, Russian, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Spanish. While waiting to be escorted to the test room I did my best to ignore the traffic accident videos playing on the big screen television at the front of the room.
