DESPITE living in a mega city with crazy traffic, I decided I wanted to learn to drive because I thought that would afford me the chance to see Shanghai from a new perspective.

Travelling by car would give me great access to places otherwise out of my convenience zone. And sitting behind the wheel, instead of next to it, really does put a different slant on traveling about.

Shanghai may be one of the most civilized cities in China but it still has the aspect of an urban jungle where playing by the book isn’t always the best idea. It is a city where newbie drivers can easily get lost and frustrated. Studying for a driver’s license and actually driving in the city are two very different things.

Still, facing a steep “learning, unlearning and relearning” curve, I found my first six months on the road a painfully enlightening experience worth sharing.

Yes, it is all very complicated. But the main thing I was taught in my lessons on becoming a qualified driver was actually very simple.

“Don’t ask questions. Just do as you are told,” said Mr Li, my drivers’ education instructor.

Li, in his mid forties, used to be a taxi driver but now works for a local drivers’ education school. Enrolling in a school like this is mandatory for anyone who wants to learn to drive and pass the required tests in China. Self-learning or learning from friends or family is not officially sanctioned.

Like many other instructors I met, Li was harsh-spoken but soft-hearted. He was not very tolerant of the stupid mistakes I made, but he did try very hard to fit his work time into my schedule of practice. I paid a tuition fee of 7,500 yuan (US$1,224), which didn’t guarantee one-on-one instruction.

For most of my practice sessions, I shared his car with three other students. It was an old manual transmission VW Santana, not too bad for its age. It always smelled of breakfast because my practice sessions usually started early, like 7 in the morning.

After picking up all the students, Li would drive us out to the school in a suburban area, where there was a designated field for us to practice basic driving techniques.

For whole two months, I prepared for the field test. Li was very strict about honing my parking and driving skills because they would be put tested with sensors.

“See that line on the ground? It’s time to make a move!” I could hear him yelling at me from a distance.

But when I asked about the reasons behind some of the maneuvers involving marks on the pavement that wouldn’t be there when I was driving on the streets, he rolled his eyes and said, “You will see the same marks on the exams. That’s just how it works.”

It goes against my instincts as a journalist to accept such a vague answer. But I understood what he meant. We were doing the same kind of exam-oriented study that I grew up with. It was not that Li didn’t want to teach me how to improvise based on my own judgment, but that he could not afford to let me try and fail. He reminded me of high-school teachers, who were mostly concerned about my performance on the college-entrance exam.

There was a dear price for Li to pay if I failed at the test. Driving instructors all get salaries based on the pass rates of their students. Most of them are overworked and underpaid.

“If you fail more than three times, I will give up on you because I will definitely be losing money coaching you,” Li once told me rather starkly.

Of course, I would, too. Every time I would have to take the exam over, I would need to wait at least a month, pay extra fees and spend more on taking mock tests held by exam organizers, whose superiors are police officers. Thirty minutes of parking practice in a sensor-wired field cost 100 yuan, as does every 20 minutes driving on mock roads.

Mock tests are a great source of gossip about exam alterations. The last thing we wanted to hear is that exam organizers were erasing the marks they agreed with instructors to place on the ground. That would mean we would have to come up with a new plan of practice and cram on the new marks.

“Why do they make it so difficult for us?” I once asked Li.

The field test is basically about driving along a sensor-surrounded route. That means not getting caught crossing any lines and, at the same time, being recorded reaching a certain point. We were taught a rigid set of maneuvers. That was all fine and well, but it didn’t help me understand much about driving.

“Your failing the exam would help many people make more money, but not me,” Li said disconsolately.

The more driving classes I took, the more I came to realize that there was no point trying to beat the devil at his own game. I just needed to dance with it.

I was discouraged from asking questions. I was expected to know my place and keep my place when dealing with authority. I learned that all too well from my quite frustrating experience of taking the driving theory test.

The computers we examinees were required to work on were running terribly slowly. It took ages for the pages to renew themselves. Frustrated, I told myself that this test of patience would probably stead me well when I had to survive Shanghai’s traffic jams in the future.

The exam monitors seemed equally frustrated.

“We would be more than happy if your complaints to our superiors could make a difference,” one monitor said. “But, unfortunately, your choice now is to either wait patiently or quit and leave.”

Some choice!

Mr Mao, who shared the same car with me for driving practice, once bragged about how he was “street smart,” and narrowly passed the driving theory test with the “help” of an examination monitor.

“I was the only one who failed the exam that day,” Mao told me. “So before I re-took the exam, I approached the people in charge, discreetly, and asked if there was any way they could help me out.”

He winked at me.

“There is always a way, you know, at a price.”

I didn’t bother to press him for details. I was already quite aware of how petty bribery pervades the drivers’ exam process. Earlier this year, in the Hebei Province capital of Shijiazhuang, more than 20 policemen were exposed for taking millions of yuan worth of bribes for fixing driving tests.

Even though he knew I was a journalist, Mr Li was never coy about pitching me to buy “insurance” for my test. That was a euphemism for “cash on delivery” of a successful test result.

People on the receiving side of the bribes tend to lie low, with instructors acting as middlemen. To get “favored” treatment in the field driving and parking test, I paid 700 yuan, while the road test cost 1,000 yuan.

“What if I didn’t play along?” I once asked Mr Li.

He told me an urban legend-like story about an examinee who didn’t buy “insurance” and was ordered to make seven U-turns in a row during the test. Unsurprisingly, he failed the test.

“And don’t wear shorts to the road test,” Li once admonished me, after perusing the summer gear I was wearing.

“It creates a distraction for examiners?” I asked, confused.

The road test is scored by an examiner riding shotgun, instead of by an embedded computer.

“The point is not to leave them with a bad impression or provoke them into failing you,” Li responded, with exasperation. “A phone ring during the test can be considered as contemptuous.”

Luckily, for me, examiners were not in an arbitrary tyrant mood on the day I took my road test. It occurred just weeks before they were finishing as contractors and turning the examining process over to police.

The fact that I eventually became one of Li’s very few female students who managed to pass all the tests at once this year surprised my instructor. I was clearly not among his favorite students because I asked too many questions. One girl who was a much better driver than me failed the road test four times.

What I can say now from my experience is that I am a good crammer, I had luck on my side and my “insurance money” put me at ease. At the field-driving test, I was given the easier route to follow. And during the road test, I had discreet assistance from my examiner about keeping my driving pace steady.

“I tried my best to help you pass the exam,” the examiner told me and three other students after the test was done. “But your skills leave much to be desired. You really should have an experienced driver keeping you company.”

Despite a new driver’s license in my pocket, I felt trepidation at first about handling a car in a real road situation. It wasn’t just because I was new at the game. Deep in my heart, I wasn’t exactly sure what I learned from my driving classes.

Sure, I had passed all the tests, but I wasn’t certain that I was taught the skills to be a good driver. When talking to other new drivers fresh out of driving school, I found I wasn’t the only one feeling that way.

“Who taught you to drive like this?” I asked whenever I was with an accomplished driver.

To my surprise, many of them said they learned how to drive from friends, colleagues or families before they attended driving school. They were breaking the law by driving without a license, which can risk 15 days of detention if caught. I even met one person who had been driving illegally for 10 years before taking the classes to get a license.

“There was a time when I almost got caught driving without a license,” my classmate Ma told me. “But I never got involved in any accidents. What they teach us in driving school is total bullshit.”

The more I practiced on the road, the more I saw Mao was correct. The moves I learned in class didn’t apply to the road. The lessons had robbed me of my common sense in driving.

For example, it became a force of habit for me not to drive across any lines — a legacy from the field test — even when friends who were experienced drivers advised me differently to keep myself and others safe.

In their opinion, the rules in books that I had memorized for the tests were of secondary importance in the real world of driving.

So a process of “unlearning” began. I now had to master the law of jungle, which forces drivers to take advantage of others. As a basically nice person at heart, it was a hard new lesson to learn. I began to encounter situations where I couldn’t afford to be nice on the road.

In the driving lanes, pedestrians stroll idly where they shouldn’t be and motorbikes whizz past in the wrong direction.

“I dare you to hit me” is the clear message.

Many drivers vent their pent-up frustrations on newbie drivers who haven’t yet learned how to be rude and tough.

My stopping for pedestrians crossing roads provoked wailing horns from impatient drivers behind me. And I could hardly change lanes unless I summoned the courage to push my way through.

“Always drive in the middle of the road when you can” was the advice I got from several seasoned drivers.

I cannot judge them harshly. In this already too crowded metropolis, everyone fights for survival. Being polite and civilized doesn’t get you far. An aggressive attitude is essential.

“It is okay for a newbie driver like you to be scared at first,” a friend of mine reassured me. “It is like in a video game. You suddenly find yourself playing in a hard mode after passing a warm-up stage.”

All this has been an eye-opening experience.

As I join the survival-of-the-fittest challenge on the roads, I certainly am seeing Shanghai from a different perspective.