Hi me and my girlfriend just moved to Jinhua for one year of intensive chinese studying.
Once here we started our chinese driving license, and I must say Crazy Carl if you had just a little trouble getting it you where sooo sooo lucky. It took us all of two month to get it and now that we've passed all tests and jumped every hoop they wanted us to we still don't have it because now we have to wait another three days, wich will shure enough turn out to bee another two weeks.
Thats just one thing we had to learn pretty fast here in china,patience patience patience, nothing everhappens when they say it does everything takes at least four times the time as proclaimed.

Buying our two Jialing 150cc, the same ones Crazy Carl has, took us another month and was a lot of fun. I tell you when you learn chinese some where back in your own country and expect to be able to understand anyone when you are actually in china, boy are you wrong. Lots and lots of sign laguage pointing here and there and getting draged from one place to another brought us to a jialing dealer who claimed to have one offroad motorcycle, after only two weeks we had all the numerus formalitys done that one could not even dream of in any other country I've ever been and were ready to buy the first and wait again for the second one to do it all over again.

having no driving licence yet, although that doesn't seem to be a problem for any chinese motorcycle driver, we only went for small rides yet, small tours to the mountains around JinHua and such. But bigger tours are planed, one ride to Chengdu in the winter Holidays, as some to Shanghai and Nanjing to visit fellow stundents and now that we've seen Crazy Carls story we are strongly thinking about a trip up to the taklamakan bevore we leave for germany next year.

I myself ride Motorcycles for six years back in germany, my first one was an old yamaha 350XT wich is still run by my father who too is befallen by the "multi motorcycle syndrome". My second one wich still stands back in germany waiting for my returnis a 640 KTM LC4 wich I worked on a bit as to ride it as what we in germany call Enduro (offroad wheels) as well as what we call Supermoto (17 inch street wheels). And now here in China I bought my first brand new Motorcycle the 150cc Jialing in blue, I think that the only colour it comes in *g*
so much for me