By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 5, 2006

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:

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.