way Chinese men like to wear them. Truck drivers and machine operators seeking a quieter life, they wheeled off each morning from smoking circles as students arrived. The sight of a foreigner was like playing spin the bottle, which car is he going to stop at. Foreigners make up 5 percent of the school's student base.

A series of tutors guided me through driving, turning, parking, reversing. In our last classes we combined all of the skills. Turning the steering wheel: We did two hours of laying hands and doing half turns, full turns, then right turns.

Driving was sometimes a misnomer for the crawl of saloons around the obstacles, over the bridges and the go-slow bumps. With spring came machines that ripped the tar and downsized the course. Management had sold on to a property developer or to the neighboring railway yard, depending on which tutor was talking.

I was a constant source of fascination for the other students. Most drove in fours all day every day for two weeks, taking turns behind the wheel while three more sat in the back.

Chinese students at Oriental Fashion were young and in a hurry to be licensed. There was the 74-year-old who drove alone, a dream fulfilled by a wealthy son whose driver waited in a black Audi to take the student home. White-haired and wearing thick spectacles he seemed intent on fun, preferring to give gas on the slow-go obstacle course of raised manhole lids. He had a dangerous habit of overtaking whenever his instructor's foot was off the brakes fixed in the passenger seat to tame dangerous learner drivers.

I never saw another non-Asian behind the wheel while I was driving but am told there's a good sprinkling of Russians and Indians. Whatever, business is good: Students need to book a week in advance to get a car and trainer. I paid dearly in sleep and silver for my license to drive in China. But not wanting to contribute to Beijing's pollution and congestion, I'm sticking to my bike.

The writer is Irish and lives and works in Shanghai