Shanghai to Chongming Island..... almost

[euphonius]

OK, so it was like 36C in the shade yesterday morning. Perfect time to slip into head-to-toe black heavy riding gear, black leather boots and a black helmet for a little ride! Moreover, I was motivated by the grave insult of Shanghai -- The Endless City! -- being left off of Chinabiker's list of 12 most-desirable-for-convenient-and-spectacular-motorcycling satellite office venues. It may take some heavy lifting, but we'll find some redeeming aspect of being based in Shanghai!

So ryanjpyle and I set out a bit after 10, thinking we'd pop up onto the northern Inner Ring elevated highway (FORBIDDEN! FORBIDDEN! FORBIDDEN!) and zip out to Pudong for a little ride down the shore of the Yangtze. There's an onramp just north of my flat, and, because it's in Zhabei, a bit removed from the city center, there's usually no one protecting the sacred gaojia from unwelcome two-wheelers.

And so it was yesterday, an infernal, blistering Friday morning. As we headed east, traffic eased and we slipped through the Xiangyin Lu tunnel, which passes under the Huangpu river that bisects the endless city into its Puxi ("west of the Huangpu") and Pudong ("east of the Huangpu") sections. Once in Pudong, we were clicking along at 120 kph, which was nice considering that it felt, in Ryan's words, like we were "riding on the surface of the sun".

And then suddenly there was a tollgate, with no place to exit! So we put on our hangdog foreigner expressions and rolled up to the rightmost gate. I figured, what the hell, I'd ask for a ticket to enter the toll section. The young lady seemed utterly baffled, and was immediately on the intercom. A few seconds later she laid down the law.

She: "Motorcycles are not allowed on gaosu (tolled expressway)."
Me: "OK, so what are we supposed to do now?"
She: "Moment please. .....(more intercom)..... You have to turn back."
Me: "That's unacceptable. You are asking us not only to ride on the FORBIDDEN roadway, but to ride in the wrong direction. Surely you would agree that would be very unsafe."

Pause. Confusion. More intercom. I'm thinking, damn, this section of toll road is brand new, and this is probably the first time that aliens have descended to earth in precisely this spot on motorcycles and tried to get through the sacred tollgate. I sensed an opportunity in her confusion.

Me: "Well, comrade, we'll just roll straight ahead here, and take the very first exit. Promise!"
She: "Please wait..."

But by then we had slipped through the 2m wide opening to the right of the horizontal gate, and indeed were looking intently and earnestly for the "very first exit". Whereupon appeared a road sign: "Next exit: Changxing Island 13 km." And the mouth to a tunnel.

Ryan and I have bluetooth in our helmets so we had a quick consultation. We were both feeling frisky, and thought, hell, let's give it a shot. We could honestly say we were still looking for the first exit, and, OK, we didn't know it was 13km away, albeit after passing through the longest -- and of course FORBIDDEN -- tunnel under the mighty Yangtze!

The tunnel was beautiful and new and clean and largely empty and, above all, bracingly cool. We had no idea whether the tolltaker had pushed a panic button and alerted others. As we rolled along, we passed a yellow tunnel maintenance truck filled with workers, and soon thereafter we heard a very loud siren. It was the maintenance truck, and they were coming after us! We were running about 20 clicks above the 60kph limit, but agreed it would be stupidly unsafe to stop in the tunnel, so we carried on another 4km or so to daylight, and over a flyover, at which point there was another tollgate.

We realized we now were bang in the middle of the Yangzte -- indeed on Changxing Island, halfway to Chongming Island. The mouth of the Yangtze features several major islands, the largest being Chongming, which, though administratively still part of Shanghai, actually lies closer to the southern flank of Jiangsu province. Changxing lies between Chongming and Shanghai proper. Since time immemorial, Changxing and Chongming were reachable only by boat (or military aircraft). That all changed with the arrival of the Shanghai Yangtze River Tunnel connecting southward to Pudong, and the Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge connecting northward to Chongming, which, in turn, will soon be linked to Jiangsu by another major suspension bridge, the Chongqi Bridge, which is scheduled to open sometime in 2010.



Anyway, the yellow truck, siren still screaming, was upon us, and told us to pull to the side. We did so, right next to a giant blue statue of Haobao, the ubiquitous Shanghai Expo mascot. They hopped out and were on the radio. One guy asked if we spoke Chinese, but we ignored him. From then on they never really asked again, and two highway cops appeared. One used Highway Cop Basic English to say, "Where did you come from?" and "Motorcycle is not allowed on gaojia."



This was a bit surreal.



After a few more minutes of abject confusion, and lots of chatter by radio, one cop got a notion to ask us for ID. "Passport please." No, not license and registration. Passport. Go figure. I pulled out my license and registration and Shanghai Residence Card. "They're both completely legal," one cop proclaimed. Now they started to think about how we were going to get back. "They can take the ferry," said one. Another motioned to us to mount up; we were free to go. We were having none of this -- being stranded on an island that has probably only a couple ferries a day to Shanghai. As the yellow truck pulled away, I jumped out and stopped it. Still feigning not to speak Chinese, I motioned that they should escort us back to Shanghai -- through the same FORBIDDEN tunnel we'd arrived through. The boys in the truck liked this, and within minutes we being led around the toll gate and back south toward Shanghai.

My only regret is that we exited on Changxing Island, rather than pushing our luck, blowing off the yellow truck and aiming not for the "very first exit" but the next one -- Chongming Island itself. That way we'd have traversed both the new tunnel and the new suspension bridge, and had even better bragging rights. As it stands, I'm guessing we are probably among the very few, if not the first, motorcyclists to ride the Shanghai Yangtze River Tunnel.

I'm thinking we'll come back and try the whole thing again, soon.