It did, though, give us a chance to get ourselves some stir fried vegetables, lemon chicken, braised eggplant, and a plate of tofu. The discovery that the policewoman who issues residence certificates would be out to lunch for another 45 minutes did not improve our mood. Three hours into the process we were two bureaucratic steps back and 500 yards from where we had started. Only the nearest police station to my colleague’s home could issue such a certificate. The police would accept only a certificate issued by the police themselves. The residence certificate my colleague presented had been issued by the management of the compound where he lives. It did not take long for the policeman at the counter, sitting under a sign reading “Harmonious Traffic for Beijing, Friendly Beijing Traffic Police” to find another problem. Only the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau, a branch of the city police, could make that amendment. Those papers would have to be amended before we went any further. The number in his new passport did not match the number in his vehicle ownership papers. The first official to scrutinize the seller’s papers pointed out that my colleague had changed his passport since he had bought the car. Almost as soon as we had arrived, the process ground to a halt. On Tuesday morning my colleague and I drove the car to the official second-hand car market, a sprawling conglomeration of hangar-like buildings and parking lots an hour or so through Beijing traffic from my office, where used vehicle sales must be registered. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. So when a departing journalist offered his own 7-year-old Jeep for sale last week I jumped at the opportunity to buy it. I am no mechanic, nor am I a collector of antiques, though I gather that in three years time my car will qualify as a vintage model under Chinese regulations. Spare parts are increasingly hard to find, and increasingly necessary last winter I had to be towed to the repair shop three times. Since I arrived in Beijing four years ago I have been driving a 1990 “Beijing Jeep Cherokee.” It is a historic vehicle, one of the first commercial models to roll off the production line that Chrysler set up with the Chinese government, but it has reached the end of its useful life. If you are planning to buy a second-hand car in China, read this first.
0 kommentar(er)
