A friend of mine is moving back to the States and my wife forced me to buy his car. The last thing I want to have in the big city is a car, but my wife thinks it will be useful for day trips to the countryside on the weekend, and as always She Must Be Obeyed.

Transferring the car from his name to my name took about five hours of our time. We first had to go to the used car market (exit 18 off the South Fourth Ring Road) to get the car “inspected” (they checked the VIN and declared the car in perfect mechanical order after eyeballing it) and pay off any outstanding fines. This is where things got interesting.

The computer said the car had three violations (two speeding and one running a light), all captured by one of Beijing’s 85,000 traffic cameras, which meant RMB400 (~$50) in fines had to be paid and seven “points” had to be deducted before the transfer could move forward.

My friend doesn’t have a Chinese driver’s license but he brought along his ex-wife’s — she was the one responsible for these infractions in the first place — and we said, fine, here’s the money and deduct the points from her license. Not so fast, big nose: it’s not the license that matters but the accompanying “points card,” and that was missing.

Just at this time a kid with a buzz-cut, wearing a thick gold necklace, matching gold ring and truly tasteless Bermuda shorts sidled up to us.

“May I be of assistance, dear sirs?” (I’m taking some liberty with the translation.)

“Yes, kind young man, how much time will it take to solve our current dilemma and what is your approximate remuneration?”

“I will make one phone call and within ten minutes your fines and points will magically disappear for the low, low price of only RMB750 ($98).” (He called it his “processing fee” which I thought was a nice touch.)

Since both my friend and I first came to China in the early 1990s and therefore qualify as old hands, we said instantly and in unison, “Deal!”

And badabing badaboom, it was done.

Good article by Jim Yardley, Chinese drivers hone the art of eluding the toll:

“Toll road building has been so feverish in China that roughly 40,000 kilometers of toll expressways were built from 1990 to 2005. A recent World Bank report on China’s highway construction program found that the toll roads were charging roughly the same as the German toll system.”

You often see military roadblocks just beyond the tollgates on roads leading out of Beijing — I didn’t realize they were checking for bogus military plates.

On our recent trip to Xinjiang we ran into quite a few “impromptu” roadblocks where locals would extract some money to pass. On the way to more prominent sightseeing spots there might be a “toll” every couple hundred yards as you approached the destination, which amused us. The best trick of course is to scatter the road with nails and set up a tire repair shop a convenient distance ahead — not uncommon in the People’s Republic.