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Wednesday, February 16, 2005 |
One thing I noticed in Beijing that I had not seen before in China, are
machines to pay your car parking fee. When I started living in Beijing
parking was still free, but a few years ago parking attendants started
to appear on Beijing[base ']s street. You paid them one or two kuai and could
then park as long as you wanted. But as more cars appeared on the
street also parking got more expensive. They wrote down your license
plate and arrival time, and when you left they calculated the fee. It
was still quite cheap (RMB 2 per hour in most places), and if you
returned late at night the parking attendent went home already so
parking was free again. But now it seems that the parking attendants
will be replaced by parking meters. I have seen them only on one street
so far (but I did not really pay attention to it, so they could be in
more places already), but they were not in use yet. I asked the parking
attendant about them, but he said he did not know how they worked or
when the government would start using them. But he was able to tell me
that you did not pay with cash but with your drivers debit card. This
is a card that all Chinese drivers have, and which is used to pay fines
to police when they stop you (note: this card was among others
introduced to make sure that police officers could not overcharge you
and pocket the difference themselves). The interesting thing is that
foreign drivers with a Chinese drivers license and an officially
registered Chinese car (with [OE]foreigner[base '] license plate) do not get a
card like this. That was always quite handy, as you normally would not
be stopped by police as they could not charge you anyway. Does this
mean that foreigners won[base ']t have to pay parking fees anymore in the
future?
9:55:25 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Marc van der Chijs.
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