Driving Them Crazy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 5, 2006; Page A31
You are motoring down a stretch of Chinese highway outside Chengdu, when, glancing at the side-view mirror of your Xiali 2000, you notice flames shooting from your gas tank.
Quick -- do you:
 Which President signed the bill establishing the Smithsonian Institution? A. James K. Polk B. Zachary Taylor C. Franklin Pierce D. James Buchanan  
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a. Strip off your cotton clothing and use it to smother the flames.
b. Toss water on the blaze.
c. Dig out your trusty carbon-dioxide fire extinguisher.
d. Call the U.S. Embassy for help.
The answer is definitely not (d). Only a handful of the hundreds of U.S. diplomats posted in China, we're told, (and none in the Chengdu consulate) have passed the Chinese driving exam, from which the slightly-modified question above is drawn. The "correct" answer, by the way, is (a).
Passing the multiple-choice, 100-question test of mechanical minutiae, oxcart etiquette and, oh yes, the rules of the road, is a must for anyone eager to see the world's third-largest country from behind the wheel. But get more than 10 questions on the computerized test wrong, and the screen lights up with a weepy yellow emoticon and the woeful message: "It is sorry that you do not pass."
China does not recognize international driver's licenses, even for diplomats. And State Department ethics preclude passing the test by slipping a few hundred yuan into the palm of a proctor. That has left our nation's diplomatic corps in an awkward position: on foot.
"The silver lining is, our diplomats get to practice their Chinese with the local taxi drivers," said the State Department employee who alerted The Washington Post to this situation -- and who doesn't have a Chinese driver's license, either.
Jian Huali, first secretary at the Chinese Embassy, had no pity for our sweat-hog foreign service officers. "You think this is funny? I don't think they are studying," he said. "Washington has a half-million people. Beijing has 3 million cars. . . . We need people to be more aware of what they are doing on the street.
"Ninety-five percent of Chinese can pass the test. I passed with only one question wrong."
Well. It seemed only fair to test Jian Huali with three sample questions. Wrong, wrong and wrong.
"If you asked me in Chinese, I could do better," he said. "Also, I haven't been in China for four years. . . . The traffic regulations change every day."
Then he asked: "Are you going to put my name in the paper and say I have gotten three questions wrong?"
The correct answer is yes.
