How I Got My Chinese Driver’s License

Travel Stories: In an excerpt from his new book, "Country Driving," Peter Hessler -- aka Ho Wei -- recalls his Beijing driving exam

02.18.10 | 11:23 AM ET

Peter Hessler ChinaPeter Hessler at Qinghai Lake (Photo courtesy of Peter Hessler)

There are still empty roads in China, especially on the western steppes, where the highways to the Himalayas carry little traffic other than dust and wind. Even the boomtowns of the coast have their share of vacant streets. They lead to half-built factory districts and planned apartment complexes; they wind through terraced fields that are destined to become the suburbs of tomorrow. They connect villages whose residents traveled by foot less than a generation ago. It was the thought of all that fleeting open space—the new roads to old places, the landscapes on the verge of change—that finally inspired me to get a Chinese driver’s license.

MORE: Read a World Hum interview with Peter Hessler about “Country Driving.”

By the summer of 2001, when I applied to the Beijing Public Safety Traffic Bureau, I had lived in China for five years. During that time I had traveled passively by bus and plane, boat and train; I dozed across provinces and slept through towns. But sitting behind the wheel woke me up. That was happening everywhere: in Beijing alone, almost a thousand new drivers registered on average each day, the pioneers of a nationwide auto boom. Most of them came from the growing middle class, for whom a car represented mobility, prosperity, modernity. For me, it meant adventure. The questions of the written driver’s exam suggested a world where nothing could be taken for granted:

223. If you come to a road that has been flooded, you should

a)  accelerate, so the motor doesn’t flood.
b) stop, examine the water to make sure it’s shallow, and drive across slowly.
c) find a pedestrian and make him cross ahead of you.

282. When approaching a railroad crossing, you should

a)  accelerate and cross.
b) accelerate only if you see a train approaching.
c) slow down and make sure it’s safe before crossing.

Chinese applicants for a license were required to have a medical checkup, take the written exam, enroll in a technical course, and then complete a two-day driving test; but the process had been pared down for people who already held overseas certification. I took the foreigner’s test on a gray, muggy morning, the sky draped low over the city like a shroud of wet silk. The examiner was in his forties, and he wore white cotton driving gloves, the fingers stained by Red Pagoda Mountain cigarettes. He lit one up as soon as I entered the automobile. It was a Volkswagen Santana, the nation’s most popular passenger vehicle. When I touched the steering wheel my hands felt slick with sweat.

“Start the car,” the examiner said, and I turned the key. “Drive forward.”

A block of streets had been cordoned off expressly for the purpose of testing new drivers. It felt like a neighborhood waiting for life to begin: there weren’t any other cars, or bicycles, or people; not a single shop or makeshift stand lined the sidewalk. No tricycles loaded down with goods, no flatbed carts puttering behind two-stroke engines, no cabs darting like fish for a fare. Nobody was turning without signaling; nobody was stepping off a curb without looking. I had never seen such a peaceful street in Beijing, and in the years that followed I sometimes wished I had had time to savor it. But after I had gone about fifty yards the examiner spoke again.

“Pull over,” he said. “You can turn off the car.”

The examiner filled out forms, his pen moving efficiently. He had barely burned through a quarter of a Red Pagoda Mountain. One of the last things he said to me was, “You’re a very good driver.”

The license was registered under my Chinese name, Ho Wei. It was valid for six years, and to protect against counterfeiters, the document featured a hologram of a man standing atop an ancient horse-drawn carriage. The figure was dressed in flowing robes, like portraits of the Daoist philosopher Lao Tzu, with an upraised arm pointing into the distance. Later that year I set out to drive across China.

When I began planning my trip, a Beijing driver recommended “The Chinese Automobile Driver’s Book of Maps.” A company called Sinomaps published the book, which divided the nation into 158 separate diagrams. There was even a road map of Taiwan, which has to be included in any mainland atlas for political reasons, despite the fact that nobody using Sinomaps will be driving to Taipei. It’s even less likely that a Chinese motorist will find himself on the Spratly Islands, in the middle of the South China Sea, territory currently disputed by five different nations. The Spratlys have no civilian inhabitants but the Chinese swear by their claim, so the “Automobile Driver’s Book of Maps” included a page for the island chain. That was the only map without any roads.

Studying the book made me want to go west. The charts of the east and south looked busy—countless cities, endless tangled roads. Since the beginning of “Reform and Opening,” the period of free-market economic changes initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, development has been most intense in the coastal regions. The whole country is moving in that direction: at the time of my journey, approximately ninety million people had already left the farms, mostly bound for the southeast, and the routines of rural life were steadily giving way to the rush of factory towns. But the north and the west were still home to vast stretches of agricultural land, and the maps of those regions had a sense of space that appealed to me. Roads were fewer, and so were towns. Sometimes half a page was filled by nothing but sprinkled dots, which represented desert. And the western maps covered more space—in northern Tibet, a single page represented about one-fifteenth of China’s landmass. In the book it looked the same size as Taiwan. None of the Sinomaps had a marked scale. Occasionally, tiny numbers identified the distance in kilometers between towns, but otherwise it was anybody’s guess.

Most roads were also unlabeled. Expressways appeared as thick purple arteries, while national highways were red veins coursing between the bigger cities. Provincial roads were a thinner red, and county and local roads were smaller yet—tiny capillaries squiggling through remote areas. I liked the idea of following these little red roads, but not a single one had a name. The page for the Beijing region included seven expressways, ten highways, and over one hundred minor roads—but only the highways were numbered. I asked the Beijing driver about the capillaries.

“They don’t name roads like that,” he said.

“So how do you know where you are?”

“Sometimes there are signs that give the name of the next town,” he said. “If there isn’t a sign, then you can stop and ask somebody how to get to wherever you want to go.”

The driver’s exam touched on this too:

352. If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should

a)  not tell him.
b) reply patiently and accurately.
c) tell him the wrong way.

* Excerpt from Peter Hessler’s Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.


Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as the Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of "River Town," which won the Kiriyama Book Prize, and Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His new book is Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.


7 Comments for How I Got My Chinese Driver’s License

Marcy Gordon 02.18.10 | 2:33 PM ET

I think driving in a foreign country is one of the best ways to experience the local culture—albeit in an oft times hair raising manner. Nothing beats having access to a car and getting deep into a place beyond the train and bus routes.

I look forward to reading Peter’s book.

pam 02.21.10 | 1:34 PM ET

I have an Austrian driver’s license. To get it, I had to hand over my US driver’s license and wait for six weeks. “What do I do in the meantime?” I asked. “You can’t drive.” responded the bureaucrat.

We were able to work out some kind of acceleration by waving around the husband’s Austrian military credentials, but still during the wait, I was legally forbidden to drive. It was maddening. When I did get my license I burst into laughter. it’s good for LIFE.

I don’t remember who wrote it but one of the funniest things I’ve ever read was a New Yorker story about learning to drive in China. The test questions had me in stitches. I hope it’s Peter Hessler—I can’t wait to read the book.

jamie 02.21.10 | 2:39 PM ET

I hold a British driver’s license, and obtaining it was one of the most intimidating experiences of my life.  Not only did I have to take 6 weeks of driving lessons to prepare for the practical test (I had been licensed to drive in California for 15 years), I also had to pass a computer simulated hazard perception test, a written test, and a what’s-what-under-the-bonnet test.

Nick 02.21.10 | 3:53 PM ET

“The Automobile Driver’s Book of Maps” has a map of an island chain with no civilian inhabitants… and no roads?! Brilliant!

I think the answer to question 352 in Cairo would be “If another motorist drives alongside you asking for directions through the window, you should stop your car in the middle of the road, block all the traffic, and then wave them in whichever direction happens to be most convenient for your arm at the time. Just never, never admit you don’t know the way.”

jessiev 02.21.10 | 8:34 PM ET

LOVE this.  i wonder what the questions are for the chinese nationals. can’t wait to read your new book!!

Danielle P. 02.27.10 | 2:20 AM ET

I can imagine the test questions! The answer to all of them must include the word “accelerate!” I bought a bike the first day I arrived in Beijing but I am just not that fit! So a few days later I bought a moped at the Makro store. What a great way to get a feel for the heart beat of the city….....and feel my own heart beat while dodging billions of people, cars, bikes and buses! It was fantastic!
I just added your book to my Amazon cart ;P

Michael 04.10.10 | 3:56 AM ET

Peter, I can not find a Chinese driving book in English anywhere. Can you help?

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.