If I were to sum up the foreigner's experience of trying to drive a car in China in a single word, which I’m quite confident I can do, that one word would be “don’t”. It is more hectic than anywhere you’ve ever been, the road signs are completely uninterpretable and the nuances are such that you simply could not capture them in anything short of a complete lifetime of living in the city.
By the time you’ll have a chance to think about this, you’ll have surely traveled in at least three or four taxi rides. In those rides your experience is sure to be split between looking up in awe at the unimaginable quantity of high rises and looking ahead at the terror of the road before you. Yes, it’s a scary ride. Terrifying really, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s dangerous.
Drivers in countries like the United States and Canada enjoy broad, open and largely congestion free traffic. If you’ve ever taken a trip to a popular spot in Mexico or Europe, you know how crazy roads can get. They can get crazy for sure, but take an ever-growing city of tens of millions like Shanghai and you’ll quickly understand how much worse it can get. You can’t talk on your phone when your driving, shave with your battery operated razor or put on your makeup, every last ounce of attention you have is sure to be fully riveted to the battle at hand… that of driving without hitting anything.
There are two reasons for wanting to rent a car when traveling. The first being unbridled freedom, but in busy China it doesn’t apply in the same way because it can’t. Unlike in spacious expanses as enjoyed in America, having a car doesn’t mean you’ll be able to park it or get out of it. What good is it to see the sights if you have to park two miles away for ten dollars and hire another taxi to take you where you’re going? I’ve never advised this before in any of the nations I’ve written about, but in China, at least, there is no cost savings to renting your own car. If you want freedom, you really want a driver, and trust me, they’re cheaper than you think.
The second reason for the car is the cost savings, which I already alluded to, is non-existant. Even though a cabbie in the states still has to make a good dozen thousand dollars a year, in China it just ain’t so. The cost of parking is more than the cost of your chauffeur, and that’s not to say anything for the value of your time that you’ll lose by not having one.
If you choose to drive in China, bear in mind that you will be amongst the most elite of crazy, dogmatic tourist to have ever visited China. If you finish your vacation without causing five accidents and hurriedly rushing to the airport to get the heck out of Dodge City before the brass catch up with you, well, then you’ll be even more unique still.
You may have an international drivers license, but if you use it to rent a car in China, I’d suggest that you do not have any international sense. Any attempt to drive in China will be met with nothing but tremendous frustration and a counteraction to any potential benefit you may have hoped to have. You will not ultimately save time, money or any amount of freedom-related frustration.
From my experience it’s always been cheaper to hire a translator and hop in any random, passing taxi and take it from there. The roads are madness, the signs even more mad and the savings completely negated by any of (or all?) of the things listed above… in short, don’t drive your own car. You’ll be happier and far better off hiring a private driver every day. Pay heed to how expensive it is to hire a driver in your own home town, then divide it by a factor of eight and understand how very, very cheap it really is.
