China driver's license practical driving test - GIF

[KustomsbyKent]

This is great to see!

I lived in China for 5.5 years, and I got my China driver's license while there, and I drove both a sidecar motorcycle and a car. The written test was quite hard, you had to study from a bank of ~1000 questions, test on 100 of them and get higher than 90%. I fortunately didn't have to take the driving test since my American license was sufficient for that.

However, many of my Chinese colleagues were also studying to pass the test, and they failed the driving portion many times. Even when they would pass, their driving skills were poor. Much of this comes from not having any practical experience driving anything during their early/teenager years like many of us in the US do. I was driving a riding lawnmower at age 5... many farm kids are driving a tractor around that age. After that, go carts, motorcycles, etc, so driving a car was pretty easy.
In China, many of them aren't driving anything like a car until they have enough money to afford a car... In Shanghai, the license plate was as expensive as the car, as the city government attempted to limit the number of cars due to congestion.
Also, actually driving in the city was quite different, and parking is a pain as the spots in a parking garage are small and tight. We had a Honda Fit, which was the right size for parking in the city. The sidecar motorcycle was fun and easy to park almost anywhere.

I remember having to teach one of my guys how to maneuver a pallet jack in the factory. He failed the drivers test many times.