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bedrock_barney
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
871 Posts |
 Posted - 04/23/2004 : 01:26:23
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Maybe Stuart can shed some light on the accuracy of the following BBC report.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3646561.stm
Imagine getting this multiple choice question:
"If you come across a road accident victim, whose intestines are lying on the road, should you pick them up and push them back in?"
 "I've rejoined the Cult of Ming / Star of favourite childhood movie of 1980" |
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realmeanmotorscutor
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1764 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2004 : 10:25:36
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Haha, hilarious. Btw, I would say no; leave the intestines where they are. It's just better for everyone that way.
 "I joined the Cult of Popeye / The CoF required my good eye" |
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2004 : 17:04:30
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Cheers Bedrock.... but I cannot view this link. If it is anyway anti Chinese then it will be blocked by the government and I won't be able to read it. If the link is about how crazy the Chinese are whilst driving then it is true, especially up north.... it's insane believe me.
BTW Bedrock, Cult of Ming.... thats my wifes name (minus 'Cult of' and add another Ming).
'I'm the Daddy Now!' - Prison Daddy of Beijing Peoples State Penitentiary |
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realmeanmotorscutor
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1764 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2004 : 17:51:56
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Really? The government blocks it? I should be in China in about 4 months so that stuff is a bit scary to me. Then again it is a Communist Country; wonder if I'll get used to it.
"I joined the Cult of Popeye / The CoF required my good eye" |
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glacial906
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1738 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2004 : 21:05:38
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| What are you going to do in China, realmean? |
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bedrock_barney
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
871 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2004 : 04:27:11
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Here's the text of the report Stuart. Nothing particularly subversive as far as I can tell.
Learning your Chinese highway code
By Louisa Lim
BBC correspondent, Beijing
China's roads are among the deadliest in the world
My family has a poor record with driving tests. I failed mine four times in the UK.
My father failed his first test for going too slowly, while my mother even managed to hit a police car on her first go.
So it was with some trepidation that I faced the prospect of getting my driving licence in China.
Little did I know what an ordeal it would turn into.
Procedure
The first stage was a series of medical examinations where men in white coats did inexplicable things.
One hit my knees and elbows with a small hammer, another scratched the soles of my feet with a stick, and a third conducted experiments involving holding a tuning fork to my ear.
From their air of resignation, it was clear that these unfortunate individuals had been assigned one test each, which they were fated to inflict on prospective drivers in perpetuity.
Chinese military officers are given free health checks on the street as part of the road safety campaign
Once I had been given a clean bill of health, I trekked out to a big grey building on the far edges of Beijing to submit my documentation.
The city planners must have been smirking when they decided where to put the driving test centre.
With the Kafkaesque logic so beloved of Chinese bureaucrats, it is almost impossible to reach the place without driving there; but you cannot get a driving licence unless you go there.
Preparation
Collecting the right documents was in itself an administrative feat that had taken months.
Various permits had to be obtained and photocopied, my driving licence translated and stamped officially, and multiple photographs produced.
Brandishing all the right bits of paper, I was given a date for my test. It was a written exam on the rules of the road in China.
When I asked the bossy woman behind the counter where I could buy a book to swot up on it, she said breezily: "Oh there is no such thing, just ask someone who has done the test."
My inquiries were not too successful.
I was handed my test paper and looked down at it with horror
"Do not worry about it," our office manager Christine said. "It is easy. We all passed with 99%."
"Why do you not just buy a licence like I did?" an English friend asked. "It saves so much hassle, it is worth every penny."
A third friend admitted that she had been driving without a Chinese licence for years. "It does not matter, no one else can drive around here anyway," she said.
The big day
New traffic sign boards are all part of the public road safety campaign
The morning of my test dawned. I had got up early and spent hours sitting in traffic to make it on time.
I was handed my test paper and looked down at it with horror. One hundred questions faced me, all of them in, frankly, incomprehensible English.
Several asked about the behaviour of people called practitioner drivers. It was only afterwards I realised this meant learner drivers.
Even though most questions were multiple choice, that did not stop them from being baffling.
In one case, answers a and c were exactly the same.
If you come across a road accident victim, whose intestines are lying on the road, should you pick them up and push them back in?
When I pointed this out to the invigilator, he took a red pen and drew a big cross through the whole question, explaining that there had been a mistake with the printing.
Other questions were well beyond the scope of this driver.
I was expected to know how high one could load a motorcycle to travel on an expressway, and exactly what role the oil pressure gauge plays in the functioning of an engine.
The most memorable question was: "If you come across a road accident victim, whose intestines are lying on the road, should you pick them up and push them back in?"
This was not a driving scenario that I had ever envisaged.
Results
At the end of it, I flunked the test. I thought I had not done too badly with 63%, but the pass mark is 90%.
My husband, who has worked as a taxi driver, and took the test in Chinese, failed too. He just scraped 70%.
Chinese traffic policemen distribute road safety information in Beijing
Unsurprisingly, our dual failure caused great mirth at the office.
Our driver chuckled all the way back, even as he mounted the pavement and swerved round pedestrians to skip a traffic jam.
Like other Beijingers, he is an expert at finding ways of avoiding the endless gridlock.
After six months here, hurtling into the path of oncoming traffic does not faze me at all, though I did draw the line when one taxi driver tried to take me down a bicycle lane on the wrong side of the road.
It is hardly surprising that China is becoming one of the most dangerous places in the world to drive.
The written driving tests are, as I discovered, meaningless and no one pays any attention to the regulations anyway.
Given the amount of traffic on the roads, driving is frankly a frustrating and hazardous experience.
So maybe it is a blessing in disguise that I have no choice but to carry on riding my bicycle, for the moment at least.
"I've rejoined the Cult of Ming / Star of favourite childhood movie of 1980" |
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realmeanmotorscutor
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1764 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2004 : 05:46:18
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quote:
Originally posted by glacial906
What are you going to do in China, realmean?
If all goes according to plan I'll be teaching English there.
"I joined the Cult of Popeye / The CoF required my good eye" |
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2004 : 02:06:43
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quote:
Originally posted by realmeanmotorscutor
Really? The government blocks it? I should be in China in about 4 months so that stuff is a bit scary to me. Then again it is a Communist Country; wonder if I'll get used to it.
"I joined the Cult of Popeye / The CoF required my good eye"
Man, the block anything that is anti Chinese, or anything to do with Taiwan. For example if BBC World ever mentions the Taiwan issue then within 10 seconds the signal will drop, and will come back up once that particular headline has finished being discussed.
You'll come to watch the news over here and take everything with a pinch of salt. Man, about a month and a half ago I was watching the English news channel over here, when they halted the program to announce that Bin Laden had been captured. Then, they carried on with their normal schedule and didn't say anything more about it. Very strange!
China is a strange place.... you have your good days when you seriously consider staying here for a long time, and then you have your bad days when you want to leave. Yesterday we went up to a secluded part of the Great Wall and camped there the night, sleeping in a derelict tower. It was fucking cool, we got pissed and had a great time. The moon and the stars were in their full glory and you could see the silhouettes of the mountains in the background. And I started to think that this isn't such a bad place if you can block out how annoying some of the people here can be.
You'll like it here Real, and you are more than welcome to come across to Beijing to link up, and maybe do a similar kind of thing at the Wall (it's well worth it).
'I'm the Daddy Now!' - Prison Daddy of Beijing Peoples State Penitentiary |
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2004 : 02:18:34
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quote:
Originally posted by bedrock_barney
Here's the text of the report Stuart. Nothing particularly subversive as far as I can tell.
"I've rejoined the Cult of Ming / Star of favourite childhood movie of 1980"
Cheers for pasting the article for me. It is true, this place is pretty dangerous and there are alot of crashes here as people do not have a clue how to drive safely. In Beijing it isn't too bad as there are so many cars here that you cannot really pick up too much speed at any point of time. The worst thing here are the road laws. If you get into a crash then you have to leave your car in the exact place of the crash, which as you can imagine causes horrendous traffic problems and is extremely frustrating.
The worst place I have been for driving is Heilongjaing where they drive like people possessed. Within 30 minutes of touching down in Harbin we were involved in 2 near accidents. The taxidrivers there will burn it along the roads and pull out infront of oncoming traffic to overtake. Not only that, they travel at high speeds along small roads and leave about a meter gap between the car in front. I was shit scared when we went up there.
'I'm the Daddy Now!' - Prison Daddy of Beijing Peoples State Penitentiary |
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klikger
= Cult of Ray =
693 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2004 : 02:25:24
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| Wow, that sounds pretty scary. I get irritated when people ride my bumper, and at high speeds it stresses me like nothing else. Camping by the Great Wall sounds like fun, but I doubt I'll ever make it into that part of the world. Funny article, nice link. |
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ShakeyShake
* Dog in the Sand *
United Kingdom
1058 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2004 : 10:45:14
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China's a place I would love to visit some day,the politics put me off a slight though
"I joined the Cult of this guy / 'cause they took my other picture away |
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2004 : 05:12:35
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quote:
Originally posted by ShakeyShake
China's a place I would love to visit some day,the politics put me off a slight though
"I joined the Cult of this guy / 'cause they took my other picture away
China is a cool place for seeing stuff, and camping on the Great Wall is one of the coolest things in the world.... especially when you are with a few mates and this and that. It's one of the nicest places I've ever visited and have plans in the next month to go up there on a Friday afternoon, and then stay until Monday. We'll take enough beer and other stuff to have a great time up there, and during the day we'll go on a long trek to the top of mountains / along the wall.
On the politics front you've got to ignore it I guess. It does piss me off a little when the Chinese come out with real naive shit, but then again it's not really their fault. Being a teacher you get to here it all, racism the lot but I guess it is something that they'll hopefully wise up to when they become more integrated with the world.
Man, fuck the politics, come out and see the place it's worth it as you'll see some of the nicest places (when it is not being spoilt by litter)... in fact if anyone ever wanted to come out here for a holiday then give me an email and I can sort shit out for you this end, plus give you a tour of the place. Would be nice to meet some of you guys at somepoint.
'I'm the Daddy Now!' - Prison Daddy of Beijing Peoples State Penitentiary |
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realmeanmotorscutor
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1764 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2004 : 11:39:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Stuart
Man, about a month and a half ago I was watching the English news channel over here, when they halted the program to announce that Bin Laden had been captured. Then, they carried on with their normal schedule and didn't say anything more about it. Very strange!
That is some weird shit. Thanks for all the info. 'd love to come visit you at some point and I definitely plan to check out the Great Wall.
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2004 : 16:55:39
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How come you have opted to teach in Hebei, thats where you are teaching aren't you?? Come to Beijing instead, Hebei is supposed to be pretty quiet with not much to do there (according to the wife).
When are you planning on coming to live in China??
'I'm the Daddy Now!' - Prison Daddy of Beijing Peoples State Penitentiary |
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realmeanmotorscutor
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1764 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2004 : 18:48:52
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Yeah, Hebei it is. Did I mention that?? Anyhoo, I'm going there because of the particular connection with my College here in the States. See, I'm working through people at my college and the only teaching opportunity in China is at Hebei. Boring you say? Hmmmmmmm . . . . Oh well, I like quiet.
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Stuart
- The Clopser -
China
2291 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2004 : 19:09:34
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I think you did mention Hebei, or it was an educated guess as you mentionned that you were going to be not far from Beijing. It'll be an experience for you no doubt, so are you gonna be teaching English, or another subject?? I personally don't know anything about Hebei, just that it is not too far from Beijing, there are some pretty nice places there though (also according to the wife). Being a teacher here though you'll get the girls after you mate, there is no avoiding that!
Man, a word of advice, make sure you check everything out (visa's, pay etc etc) as the Chinese have a habit of saying one thing and meaning another. Mind you if it is through your Uni then I'm sure they will have sorted everything for you.
'I'm the Daddy Now!' - Prison Daddy of Beijing Peoples State Penitentiary |
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Chinese driving test
