How to get a Chinese Motorcycle License

[Ben Ben Zhu]

Dear All,

Just a small update on the "getting your full license in China" subject. I have been checking around a lot with the help of my companies HR-department. But until now it seems to be impossible to do the test in English if you have to do the full motorbike license in China. And YES Shanghai license bureau offers the test in English, and YES they also offer them to driving schools and NO the driving schools are not offering them to the public. Why???? NO why, maybe there is no money in it, or maybe it is to much of a hassle for them or it is just China and its bureaucracy, I have no idea.

So I am gone start from square one and ask one of my friends from another province to help me and see if I can do the test there, but I am not so optimistic anymore about getting my Motorbike license in China.

If any of you guys have some suggestions I would love to hear.

[Joshmakesnoise]

Dear All,

Just a small update on the "getting your full license in China" subject. I have been checking around a lot with the help of my companies HR-department. But until now it seems to be impossible to do the test in English if you have to do the full motorbike license in China. And YES Shanghai license bureau offers the test in English, and YES they also offer them to driving schools and NO the driving schools are not offering them to the public. Why???? NO why, maybe there is no money in it, or maybe it is to much of a hassle for them or it is just China and its bureaucracy, I have no idea.

So I am gone start from square one and ask one of my friends from another province to help me and see if I can do the test there, but I am not so optimistic anymore about getting my Motorbike license in China.

If any of you guys have some suggestions I would love to hear.

Yeah I'm sad to also admit that I hit this barrier a few weeks ago. Its a real pain in the arss but hey ho, I guess this is how it's going. Actually, I told them I'd do the test in Chinese because I couldn't be fucked with going to another city. Then after all the health check I return to the school and they ask me "why is your vosa not issued in shanghai?"

At that moment I didn't hit until the woman said we only accept the visas from shanghai. Which is the residence permit visa holders, so working or studying visa holders can take the test but any other visa holder cant.

I'm currently in the process for finding a new way to get it, but with being busy this stuff is hard to sort out.

[NZBrakelathes]

Yeah I'm sad to also admit that I hit this barrier a few weeks ago. Its a real pain in the arss but hey ho, I guess this is how it's going. Actually, I told them I'd do the test in Chinese because I couldn't be fucked with going to another city. Then after all the health check I return to the school and they ask me "why is your vosa not issued in shanghai?"

At that moment I didn't hit until the woman said we only accept the visas from shanghai. Which is the residence permit visa holders, so working or studying visa holders can take the test but any other visa holder cant.

I'm currently in the process for finding a new way to get it, but with being busy this stuff is hard to sort out.

I've hit the wall too
All I can do is pay a fortune and go to Haikou to do it semi legal! One day paid service costing around 10000¥ total that's if I convert my car and bike license from NZ

[MFarrens]

Hit a wall here in Jiangmen, Guangdong. I went to the License department a few months back to ask if the offered the motorcycle License test which is the same for D & E licenses in English to ad to my C1 license I already had an passed the test for it in English on the first try without studying. It took a while to get the answer and they said they offered the test in English, so I paid the money did the health check and setup the soonest available date for the written test which gave me 6 weeks to prepare and practice the road test for the D License. Day of the test came and The test Administrator who they asked if they had in English or not said they only had the test in Chinese. the head of the department had to get involved and told me Sorry. I said I would just take it in Chinese then anyway, and have been trying to come up with a numerical (counting symbols in questions) and statistical study system and hope I get lucky in one of my tries. It has been a month and I still have yet to pass the Chinese version of the test. Is there anywhere I can get a D License endorsement added and I am willing to pay up to 10,000rmb and travel if need be. I have a Resident Permit and my wife is a Jiangmen Local with Chinese citizenship. I find it absurd that they wont just let me take the driving test and be done with this considering I already passed the written test once, which for the C1 there is an even larger pool of questions.

LOL at the Chinese just trying to park a car!!!

Michael in Jiangmen

[ZMC888]

Hit a wall here in Jiangmen, Guangdong. I went to the License department a few months back to ask if the offered the motorcycle License test which is the same for D & E licenses in English to ad to my C1 license I already had an passed the test for it in English on the first try without studying. It took a while to get the answer and they said they offered the test in English, so I paid the money did the health check and setup the soonest available date for the written test which gave me 6 weeks to prepare and practice the road test for the D License. Day of the test came and The test Administrator who they asked if they had in English or not said they only had the test in Chinese. the head of the department had to get involved and told me Sorry. I said I would just take it in Chinese then anyway, and have been trying to come up with a numerical (counting symbols in questions) and statistical study system and hope I get lucky in one of my tries. It has been a month and I still have yet to pass the Chinese version of the test. Is there anywhere I can get a D License endorsement added and I am willing to pay up to 10,000rmb and travel if need be. I have a Resident Permit and my wife is a Jiangmen Local with Chinese citizenship. I find it absurd that they wont just let me take the driving test and be done with this considering I already passed the written test once, which for the C1 there is an even larger pool of questions.

LOL at the Chinese just trying to park a car!!!

Michael in Jiangmen

The government only allowed license transfers during the opening up period to keep foreign business investors happy. Now with the change of license rules they have graciously translated the car license, next time probably they won't even bother with that, unless other countries play tit-for-tat and refuse to recognize theirs, or they sign up to international rules and gain some advantage for themselves.

The 'unavailability' of the motorcycle license is what I had suspected, they seem to love the car idea of total car homogeneity regardless of common sense.

The only way around this seems to be to transfer both car and motorcycle licenses together, in which case you'll only have to answer the car questions. This worked before the license rules were changed, whether this will still work now, I'm not sure. Cheapest option I believe is to just cancel your current license and start over, sorry to say, but I'm not even 100% sure that would work.

[bikerdoc]

Hit a wall here in Jiangmen, Guangdong. I went to the License department a few months back to ask if the offered the motorcycle License test which is the same for D & E licenses in English to ad to my C1 license I already had an passed the test for it in English on the first try without studying. It took a while to get the answer and they said they offered the test in English, so I paid the money did the health check and setup the soonest available date for the written test which gave me 6 weeks to prepare and practice the road test for the D License. Day of the test came and The test Administrator who they asked if they had in English or not said they only had the test in Chinese. the head of the department had to get involved and told me Sorry. I said I would just take it in Chinese then anyway, and have been trying to come up with a numerical (counting symbols in questions) and statistical study system and hope I get lucky in one of my tries. It has been a month and I still have yet to pass the Chinese version of the test. Is there anywhere I can get a D License endorsement added and I am willing to pay up to 10,000rmb and travel if need be. I have a Resident Permit and my wife is a Jiangmen Local with Chinese citizenship. I find it absurd that they wont just let me take the driving test and be done with this considering I already passed the written test once, which for the C1 there is an even larger pool of questions.

LOL at the Chinese just trying to park a car!!!

Michael in Jiangmen

The government only allowed license transfers during the opening up period to keep foreign business investors happy. Now with the change of license rules they have graciously translated the car license, next time probably they won't even bother with that, unless other countries play tit-for-tat and refuse to recognize theirs, or they sign up to international rules and gain some advantage for themselves.

The 'unavailability' of the motorcycle license is what I had suspected, they seem to love the car idea of total car homogeneity regardless of common sense.

The only way around this seems to be to transfer both car and motorcycle licenses together, in which case you'll only have to answer the car questions. This worked before the license rules were changed, whether this will still work now, I'm not sure. Cheapest option I believe is to just cancel your current license and start over, sorry to say, but I'm not even 100% sure that would work.

TIC LFZ...

I'd not cancel the current DL since it is still useful...
Following ZMC888's thoughts...

I'd recommend finding some place else to 'live' or register as living e.g. Hainan or some-place favourable, affordable and doable. You could find a cheap place to rent as a summer vacation/holiday home or some such. Michael, does your wife have some family living some place else where you could go 'stay' and get yourself registered residence wise?

Get oneself registered with the local PSB office for that all important residence slip of paper, then simply go to the local Traffic PSB and then start the all important 'converting overseas issued DL recognition and transfer process' from scratch, making sure to get the car (C1) &motorcycle (E) or sidecar/outfit (D) officially translated as ZMC888 is suggesting above. However. don't declare the current PRC issued DL. Just go about it all as though it's your 'first time' - you PRC DL virgin you...



If personal circumstances don't align with such plans, then there is apparently some method involving a third party who is apparently able to facilitate procuring PRC DL's in Haikou or similar location.

[ZMC888]

TIC LFZ...

I'd not cancel the current DL since it is still useful...
Following ZMC888's thoughts...

I'd recommend finding some place else to 'live' or register as living e.g. Hainan or some-place favourable, affordable and doable. You could find a cheap place to rent as a summer vacation/holiday home or some such. Michael, does your wife have some family living some place else where you could go 'stay' and get yourself registered residence wise?

Get oneself registered with the local PSB office for that all important residence slip of paper, then simply go to the local Traffic PSB and then start the all important 'converting overseas issued DL recognition and transfer process' from scratch, making sure to get the car (C1) &motorcycle (E) or sidecar/outfit (D) officially translated as ZMC888 is suggesting above. However. don't declare the current PRC issued DL. Just go about it all as though it's your 'first time' - you PRC DL virgin you...



If personal circumstances don't align with such plans, then there is apparently some method involving a third party who is apparently able to facilitate procuring PRC DL's in Haikou or similar location.

Surely they'd simply look at where his visa/residence permit was issued and tell him to apply there? Worth a try though.

[bikerdoc]

Surely they'd simply look at where his visa/residence permit was issued and tell him to apply there? Worth a try though.

Sorry maybe my reply was not clear...

I wrote that he (Michael) needs to get registered as living some place else. It is possible to register in a different location without having to 'rent' a residential property, provided one can get a person who has the property certificate to 'vouch' for that person as staying as a 'visitor'. Hence my question/suggestion to look at in-laws living elsewhere provided that location/jurisdiction is foreign friendly. Michael with his wife's support could claim to be living or residing there for 'summer' or some such.

Worst case scenario is Michael and wife might want to rent a second place in a foreign friendly location officially so he can use the other option of the property 'rental contract' to claim residence. Once Michael has the all important temporary residence registration certificate (slip of paper) he then uses this to go through the converting overseas issued DL from scratch as outlined.

[ZMC888]

Sorry maybe my reply was not clear...

I wrote that he (Michael) needs to get registered as living some place else. It is possible to register in a different location without having to 'rent' a residential property, provided one can get a person who has the property certificate to 'vouch' for that person as staying as a 'visitor'. Hence my question/suggestion to look at in-laws living elsewhere provided that location/jurisdiction is foreign friendly. Michael with his wife's support could claim to be living or residing there for 'summer' or some such.

Worst case scenario is Michael and wife might want to rent a second place in a foreign friendly location officially so he can use the other option of the property 'rental contract' to claim residence. Once Michael has the all important temporary residence registration certificate (slip of paper) he then uses this to go through the converting overseas issued DL from scratch as outlined.

I can't really understand how this could possibly work. Surely his passport number has already been used to issue a driving license, therefore that number is in the system as all driving licenses are tied to the Chinese ID card number (thousands of people called Li Ming or Wang Xiaofeng so they can't rely on names), so I'd suspect that you might be pretty lucky to be able to get away with using the same passport number in the Chinese driving licensing system twice, surely it would get flagged?

At the Gong An the passport and all pages will be thoroughly gone through and the resident visa inspected and photo page photocopied. They would then see that the residency permit was issued elsewhere and that you are normally resident there surely this would be a block?

[bikerdoc]

Possibly. You could be right.

As far as data sharing goes, who knows, maybe... but TIC LFZ, and as most of us regulars know all too well, every little part of PRC acts as its own little kingdo0m.

However, in the case of residing elsewhere while being registered as per the applicable passport residence visa in a different location, it is very possible to also rent/live some place else on a part-time basis.

As an example, Mon-Fri the person lives and works in location A, then on weekends travels to a nearby destination to reside for the weekend (because they prefer the climate, the location [for whatever reason]) in location B. If one rents or stays in a hotel for these weekends in location B, then either way that individual must be registered with the PSB. In the case of an approved hotel that is done automatically, in the case of a residence, the individual needs to undertake this task.

This could be a very feasible option for a foreigner working in SH as example. Live & work in SH Mon-Fri, then travel to Hangzhou or Ningbo to stay for weekends, both of which offer better environments, tourist sites and quality of life than big SH. Bus and trains can easily get the person between SH - HZ or NB in several hours making either destination a doable weekend escape. Actually in reality many SH plated vehicles can be seen in NB on weekends, seeing as the HZ Bay Bridge makes NB a very accessible destination in only 3 hours travel time.

I'm not saying the idea(s) definitely work, but by the same token I wouldn't discount them either. It depends on so many factors - no one situation or circumstance fits all.

TIC LFZ...

YMMV.