Travel China and Beyond

Getting a driving license in China / Beijing

Recently I encountered a bunch of questions on how to get a driving license (for a foreigner) if you are living in China, so I decided to post some information on the matter - from my first hand experience. So you have a couple of options:

1) Go to Automobile Administrative Office, Foreign Affairs Branch, 18 Nansihuan Donglu, Chaoyang District. and then continue by going through medical exam, getting a translated version of the exam prepation book, submit applications for the exam with a bunch of documents to the Automobile Administrative Office, ….. and eventually take the exam….

2) The easier option (I recommend it — I went down this path) is to go directly to FESCO in Beijing (they are located on the 2nd loop road North of the JianGuo Ave.) - at Chaoyangmen Nandajie, Chaoyang District, and bring 800RMB, your passport with Z-Visa / residence permit, a bunch of (about 5) passport size photos and your US (home country) driving license. They will give you a study book, which you can review in a weekend. At the same time they will schedule an exam date for the written test.

For the exam you will need to recognize some basic Chinese characters (characters that appear on the road surface) — things like “slow” in Chinese… But overall the test is not bad — common sense stuff plus some strange questions like “if you are driving a car and you need to clear your throat, where do you spit? (a) outside the window (b) on the floor of the car compartment/cabin (c) in a tissue paper

or what types of shoes are you supposed to wear while driving a car…. Interesting stuff.

At any rate, if you really want to experience the fun of driving in China / Beijing, head over to FESCO with your RMB800 and the excitement will begin. Hope to see you out there on the Beijing highways…! And remember, use your car horn sparingly It is very tempting to beep at all those hapeless pedestrians and even more at the drivers that believe that theirs is the utmost urgent matter in town so they really need to cut you off as they try to get ahead of you on the 3rd Loop Road….but by all means keep your cool and be safe.