Paying a parking ticket in China's Far West

September 6, 2014 10:47 AM

I’m not here to gripe about a ticket that I admittedly earned. What I couldn’t believe was just how difficult it was to pay the fine.

FarWestChina offers an entertaining commentary on life in Xinjiang alongside a well-researched background of the region's history, ethnicity, and customs. More on Xinjiang: "It is home to a number of ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Hui, Kyrgyz, and Mongols, with a majority of the population adhering to Islam." (Previously)

posted by Nevin (17 comments total)

When I was living in the Pearl River Delta (Shekou/Shenzhen), I had a friend and his wife go and get their driver's licences. They flew into Chengdu (I think), and during the test period, the agent told them not to touch anything while a guy crouched down next to them and clicked the correct answers. First time pass for both of them! They are now free to get killed in the horrific manner described in the article.

Also, the photos don't do justice as to how dusty Urumqi is.
posted by arcticseal at 10:59 AM on September 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

This story is frighteningly similar to how you get your car back when it's towed to the 103rd street impound lot here in Chicago except that it costs 5 times as much and no one is gonna answer the door for you if you show up a minute after closing.
posted by phunniemee at 11:59 AM on September 6, 2014 [7 favorites]

This is honestly way less Byzantine than the initial sell made me think it was gonna be. I've had 1000x more trouble figuring out where my car was towed, and even if I had a parking ticket in Seattle. The entire system here at least, seems to be structured to make sure you pay late fees or storage fees on everything if you for any reason didn't get the original paper ticket(which isn't that uncommon, especially on motorcycles).

Shockingly straightforward here honestly. And the weird ticket booth in the middle of nowhere is regular small town stuff, as perfectly described in the most recent Missouri thread.
posted by emptythought at 12:25 PM on September 6, 2014 [8 favorites]

I was expecting something much more Kafkaesque.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:29 PM on September 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think the expectations expressed here speak loudly for how Kafkaesque our society is.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:43 PM on September 6, 2014 [13 favorites]

Everyone I knew with a car in China had a radar detector and/or a GPS navigation system with the locations of every traffic camera pre-programmed. It was always fun riding with the guy who liked to drive his old Santana 150km/h on the highway. He'd swerve around the dusty trucks, pass on right, pass on the shoulder -- anything to maintain speed, with the GPS saying "the speed limit is 80km/h, please drive safely" over and over again -- except every 5km or so he'd slam on the brakes to get down to 80 before passing the cameras.
posted by bradf at 12:44 PM on September 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

And the weird ticket booth in the middle of nowhere is regular small town stuff, as perfectly described in the most recent Missouri thread.

Ah sorry, I framed the post from a pragmatic Canadian "peace, order, and good government" perspective. I'll try to keep the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the US ("the best of all possible worlds") in mind in the future!
posted by Nevin at 1:04 PM on September 6, 2014 [7 favorites]

You can tell a Canadian is going to insult you when they start with "Ah sorry".

/some of my best friends are Canadians
posted by benito.strauss at 1:50 PM on September 6, 2014 [8 favorites]

That's it? I've had more trouble finding somebody who knows where common items are in Home Depot. More times than I'd like to admit.
posted by Rykey at 2:54 PM on September 6, 2014

Wild goats on his walk? Lucky!
posted by morganw at 4:42 PM on September 6, 2014

Dude, his process was better than my time tracking my towed vehicle from the Ferry Terminal in San Francisco with an infant strapped to my front. I knew it was going to be bad when a passing cop winced when I explained that my vehicle had been towed and that there was a very cryptic note left behind. A crapton of time to get to find the correct lot, the mockery of a taxi driver and the creepiness of a lot of bullet proof glass handing over my money to get my car. Yeah, pounding on the door loudly and violating the sacredness of the lunch hour? He was able to pay his fine with no up charge. Take the victory and run.
posted by jadepearl at 4:50 PM on September 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

You can tell a Canadian is going to insult you when they start with "Ah sorry".

No, that's just how you can tell a Canadian is talking.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 6:24 PM on September 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

As I began the two-mile trek back to the road I calculated how much I had spent in the process of paying my 200 RMB speeding ticket. All of the taxis had added up to approximately 90 RMB and that doesn’t include the four hours of my time, which I’d like to think is worth something as well.

When I paid a 200 RMB fine for a traffic violation in Xinjiang a while back, it took a full 26 hours from me arriving at the police station before they allowed me to pay and leave. Four hours sounds like a bargain.
posted by klue at 10:14 PM on September 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

For this American, that just sounds like a normal transaction with a local municipal government agency. He's just lucky that they took cash and didn't require him to pay with a money order.
posted by octothorpe at 5:13 AM on September 7, 2014

Seriously, this guy's only problem was his cab driver didn't know where he was going. It looks like he got a legit fine, easily determined which agency had the right to be paid, and then that agency accepted payment with minimal hassle.
posted by MattD at 7:30 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, he did have to walk two miles each way on a gravel path through a village that hadn't been built yet, unless he was exaggerating.
posted by subdee at 9:39 AM on September 7, 2014

I've walked through plenty of unfinished developments like that in China, he's not making that bit up. They have this habit of building stuff and just not connecting the dots up.
posted by arcticseal at 11:26 AM on September 7, 2014