I am very interested in learning how to get a motorcycle license in Kunming. I will be here for at least another year and I do not want to settle for the electric bike route. Does anyone know how to start this process?

usually they need to take exam, paper and driving, the paper exam is in chinese, can u do that

If you have a motorcycle license in your home country, you only need to take the theory test. (You have to get your foreign license professionally translated into Chinese.) If you take a memory stick to the big traffic police station somewhere out in the southeast of the city, they will give you a copy of the driving test questions in English. There are about 1100 questions and you have to answer 100 multiple choice. The questions are very difficult, many of them nonsensical, so it takes a while to learn them. When you take your test you get two attempts at getting 90%, otherwise you have to rebook and try again another day.

Regarding getting a bike, you can only ride outside the 2nd ringroad. The registration fee for riding inside the 2nd ringroad is enormous, somewhere in the region of fifteen thousand kuai from memory (yes, fifteen thousand!)

If you want anything bigger than 200cc, bikes are very hard to find in the Kunming area. I have seen some, but not many. The ones in the bikes shops I've seen look as if they've been down the road a few times. I'm not even sure if you're legally allowed to ride a big bike in this area. When I tried to buy one I seemed to be dealing with some very dodgy characters.

The whole process of getting a license, a bike, getting it registered, taxed, insured, etc. is quite complicated. I recommend taking a Chinese friend who has been through the process themselves to help you.

Hope this is of some help. It was correct as of December 2007 when I got my bike (Zhongshen 200GS), but as you know, things change here.