Hello everyone,
I have just returned from a long 2 1/2 month road trip through Western China. I am trying to sell a lot of the gear in the classifieds (www.gokunming.com/[...]
Whatever I can't sell by the time I'm ready to go I want to donate. I also have a bunch of food and some other things that aren't worth selling.
Is there a place to donate food or other goods for disaster relief?
Thanks.
Hey everone,
I've just finished a 2 1/2 month roadtrip through Western China. I just got back to Kunming yesterday, accident-free!
I have a few questions about paying traffic tickets.
1. Where do you go pay traffic tickets? At the big PSB on the Southeast side of the city?
2. How quickly will tickets show up in their system? And how quickly will they disappear once you pay them? I am going to start selling my car tomorrow and I know you have to have all tickets paid before someone else can register the car. Any experience here?
3. IMPORTANT - Does your license accumulate points if you get an automatic ticket from the cameras/radar? Or do you have to get "pulled over" (something I saw maybe twice in the whole trip) in order for them to know that it was YOU driving your car?
I am a little worried that I accumulated enough tickets to have 12+ points on my license, which means if I go to pay the tickets they might revoke my license right there.
Any experience here would be great. I know the point system is new this year so I don't know how it works.
Incidentally, the cameras / radar configurations I saw were so different all over Western China. Some cameras had radar, some were just flashing cameras (I assume they calculate your speed based on entry and exit points or toll gates). Some were simply not working, cameras pointed at the sky or with loose wiring hanging.
Thanks
Thanks for the advice.
We have arrived safely back in Kunming. After much deliberation we took the Songpan - Wenchuan - Dujiangyan route to Chengdu 3 days ago, then we drove to Zhaotong 2 days ago, then yesterday we drove from Zhaotong back to Kunming.
We decided to take the Dujiangyan option after much deliberation. We favored the relatively equal danger of taking that road over one day with taking a Northern route (all the way back up through Lanzhou - Xi'an - Chengdu) through an earthquake zone for 3-4 days. In Songpan we spoke with whoever we could find. A caravan of drivers from Chengdu who had come through there the day before said there was no problem, no rockfall, and that it was safe.
So... we made it through without a problem. Part of that was due to the weather, which was thankfully just overcast. Having now driven it though, I would say it's still too dangerous and would not take it again. I'll explain below.
It is definitely a gorgeous drive. If it weren't so prone to disaster I would have taken it more slowly.
Between Wenchuan and Dujiangyan North- and Southbound traffic is being alternated on a schedule that no one seems to know about. We got there at 1pm (there were about 100 cars in front of us) and sat there for 2 hours before they let us through. Once you can go, traffic stays mostly on the Southbound side but gets redirected (rather informally) to the Northbound side 3 or 4 times. This whole section is 80% tunnels. Really really long tunnels that all seem to be 2000m-8000m long. I have never been in such long tunnels. Some of the tunnels have evidence of water/silt collecting from the flooding, but they are generally new, clean and safe looking.
We saw some of the severe damage to the Northbound side of the highway. In several cases when the road hugged the mountain there was mud/rockfall that had blocked the road and has since been cleared. In one case when the river switches over from one side of the valley to the other the Southbound bridge that passes over it was completely wiped away. The pillars must have given out. Frightening. In two other cases rockfall destroyed part of the tunnel entrances. The old road, which wrapped the mountainside and seemed to have few tunnels, was completely destroyed in a few cases. The mountains here are tall and steep so when there is rockfall it comes through a ravine and then destroys anything in its way on the way down.
After Dujiangyan you're out of the mountains and are totally fine. Before the last (older) tunnel a group of police hands you a toll card since you're now in the clear. Otherwise there is no one directing, managing or overseeing anything. Random cars and sometimes police escorts still come through from the other direction while you're driving right toward them.
The drive from Yibin to Zhaotong sucks. The road is shitty and there were tons of places where recent land/rockslides had been cleared. We would definitely have taken a longer route back if we knew how bad it was, but it is so hard to find good information on current road conditions.
Anyway we are back in Kunming safely!
Hello everyone,
I am currently in Songpan, Sichuan trying to figure out the best (safest) route back to Kunming via Chengdu. I am driving my own car.
I am trying to find a road that is:
- as safe (as possible) from collapses, mudslides, rockslides, etc. i.e. is not wrapped around lots of mountainsides.
- currently in known good condition since the flooding. i.e. is relatively free of Sichuan potholes, giant bumps/drops, etc.
- has no active road construction
This may be a tall order, but that's why I'm asking here.
I have been told that G213 is in good condition from Songpan to Wenchuan, but between Wenchuan and Dujiangyan (one of the worst-hit areas) there were several collapses, and traffic is being controlled and redirected in that section (e.g. northbound traffic from 6-11am, southbound traffic from 11am-6pm).
I'm wary of taking this road in case there are any further collapses.
I have also heard that the road from Songpan to Pingwu is in *worse* condition than G213. Can anyone confirm this?
I am willing to drive extra distance in order to get into Chengdu in order to avoid dangerous areas. Please any experience or familiarity with current road conditions and details are really appreciated.
How are the roads from Chengdu to Kunming. Recommendations / suggestions?
Cheers!
@remishenzhen you don't need any assistance. At most maybe you would need to bring a translator to help you talk to the Traffic Police folks at the Traffic Bureau, who speak only some basic English.
The test is in English. In Kunming it costs 60rmb (yes, 60) to take it up to three times. If you fail 3x you just pay another 60rmb and try again.
You can get a license on a tourist visa. I did in April 2013. You just need a residence certificate. This is not a residence permit, which is the same thing as a work visa. A residence certificate is just a document the police give you when you go to register your apartment at the police office. There are also some other documents you need to have like photocopies of your passport (photo page and visa/entry stamp pages), photos (you can get them there), and the approved translation of your foreign drivers license.
The test itself is in English. The questions as of the new 2013 test are totally reasonable. All the odd questions about first aid, what to do if you are submerged in water, how to jump out of the window, etc are gone.
Right now (May 2013) the only place I could find an English translation of the test questions was in an iOS app called Driving in China (
itunes.apple.com/us/app/driving-in-china/id486138822?mt=8). It uses all the actual questions with user-submitted translations. It is quite good and if you consistently get 90+ on the app's test you should be fine.
There are some other threads that may also be helpful. You can ignore any of my confused questions about which version of the test questions will be used. The test in Kunming and probably everywhere in China at this point uses the new 2013 questions.
www.gokunming.com/en/forums/thread/1549/chinese_drivers_license
No results found.
