The national highway #318, otherwise known in Shanghai as Hu-qing-ping is a great road for motorcycles, one of my all-time favorites. The best part is where it goes through the Dianshan Lake area which is sparsely populated, not much traffic, and excellent paved conditions.

There are, however, two police checkpoints on that road to be aware of.

One checkpoint is right along the border line of Shanghai and Jiangsu provinces which is best avoided by using a backroad (PM me for details). That particular checkpoint is manned by the PSB and they are known for stopping bikes and taking down details of your documents in either direction. There was a story not so long on this forum about a rider who got stopped and then had his license confiscated at that checkpoint

The other checkpoint is closer into Shanghai province. If you're heading into town, they managed to set up a new booth exclusively for the EXPO last year which has, for the most part, been closed down now. Heading out of town, there has always been a checkpoint in that area. For the most part it was inactive, but nowadays it has been revitalized.

I learned this information the hard way while getting stopped last week. The policeman was very aggressive about it, he stood right in front of the bike and forced me to stop. I showed him all the documents I had and played the dumb laowai role. No speaking Chinese whatsoever. Given that I was semi-legal (car drivers license, fapiao, passport) and played innocent they let me go, but things could have been a lot worse. Towards the back of the police office there was a line of chained up impounded bikes, and I thought mine would have ended up there.

The shocking part about this was I had cruised through that particular checkpoint at least 200 times by now without incident. In fact, a few years back, I would do this ride across the border every single day in order to get to work.

There is, however, a backroad which bypasses that particular checkpoint as well as the other one. I only discovered it recently and wished I had figured it out sooner. At any rate, if you're interested in doing this ride with the backroads, it'd make for a lot of fun.