Renting a Car in China

Renting a Car in China
Originally uploaded by chrisdrum.

As my parents are coming this weekend (clean the house! dispose of the “evidence”! disconnect the phone!), I decided it would be a nice gesture for me to pick them up at the airport on Sunday morning. But, I needed a car, as my motorbike certainly wouldn’t be able to fit three people plus tons of luggage. Lucky for me, our office manager, Charles, has a VIP card at an auto rental company new Guo Mao that happens to specialize in SUVs. See the picture to the right, I have one of these babies.

On another note, on the way to the rental lot, we stopped at the Chaoyang District traffic police station to handle unpaid traffic violations of someone else at the company (with great power). I must say, I am BIG TIME impressed with Beijing’s traffic system - in terms of fining those when people break the regulations. Beijing has a crap load of camera around the city. I guess they have people looking at these cameras 24 hours a day, because of the three unpaid violations, they had video to prove it!!! Turning on a red turn light. Yep, we saw that in color. Speeding? Yep, that one too! So, I am going to need to be careful with the rental as it has blue (local peoples) plates - I am fare game! [Note, with my motorcycle, I have black (foreigner) plates. Never had an issue, except for that 5 RMB parking ticket I got two years ago. And lets just say, I am no angle when it comes to following traffic rules.]