Heads up on the Huqingping (Shanghai)

[Fred]

Thanks for that, Fred. I figured it would come to this, and it looks like it has. At any rate, I'm one step closer to being fully legal in China. Got my motorcycle drivers license back home while I was in Vancouver (Canada) this summer!

Meanwhile, for those looking to avoid the checkpoints and are still not quite legal, then there is a route that bypasses both the river road *and* the two main G318 checkpoints. The route is a little complex and is best understood with a map which I'll see if I can post here a little later. For now, will just try and describe it by text.

As you're coming out of Shanghai on the 318, you want to turn left at the road that goes to XI CEN. It is a T-intersection with a traffic light, the last light before the first checkpoint actually.

Go on that, cross underneath the express, go past the town a little bit, cross a small bridge, and turn right on the first paved farm road you see. It will go for about 5km and it zigzags a bit. Follow the express on your right, and use the small blue police boxes (nobody is ever in them) as guidelines if you get lost. The road will spit you back on the G318 at the 62.5 KM mark and you've cleared the first checkpoint.

How to clear the next? Turn left on G318 and go a tiny bit more to the 63.3 KM mark and then turn right on the next paved farm road. That will spit you across the provincial border, and will turn into a small and narrow gravel farm road. Then you go across a small bridge, zigzag to the right, under the expressway, past a large lumber yard, and the road will get paved again. You will see a SINO CANADA school on your right where I used to work at. Keep going until the traffic circle, turn left, the road becomes a wide 6-lane paved artery which goes 3km south back to the 318 near LUXU TOWN.

Turn back right on the 318 and you have now cleared all the goddamn checkpoints.

All this, oooor.... get legal... Seems to me it would be much easier, haha !

Naah, just pulling you leg a bit Steve, as you wrote you're in the process of becoming fully legal.
I always think of this kind of thing as a balance or calculation between the less evil : what is the easiest : getting fully legal once and for all, or having to dodge all the intersections with cops in Shanghai, having to plot routes around checkpoints, etc. . In the current situation, my decision was quickly made... ;-))

[felix]

Here is the route i took home from xitang (a lovely water town in zhejiang) today.

IT took 1h30 and i didn't see a single cop the whole way to xujiahui. There is an old border station on the road where i put point B but it looks like it hasn't been manned for a long time; there were a couple of guys sleeping on the road beside it.

[Pal]

You will see a SINO CANADA school on your right...

That place brings back memories, Frobelland was out there in the 90's, Disney style amusement park that failed like many other projects (see pics attached).
Ride safe, PAL

[felix]

That gorilla is terrifying. Abandoned amusement parks are the scariest shit ever.

So you've been here a while then pal? No wonder you're so jaded!

[Pal]

So you've been here a while then pal? No wonder you're so jaded!

Had my first H-D in China 1989, yeah, you can say I have been around for a while riding different bikes all over ML China: H-D, BMW, Ducati, CJ.... hope KTM gets over here soon with legally imported bikes.

Ride Safe, PAL

[Steve_R]

Thanks for posting that route map earlier from Xitang ... gonna try it out this weekend!

Meanwhile, here is the route map I was mentioning of that convoluted plot around the #318 checkpoints

Interestingly enough, I survived a year (2008-09) of teaching at that ex-amusement park. Actually the school never ceased to be an amusement park.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=....135848,0.3368

On a somewhat related topic, I haven't seen nary a cop around Shanghai checking for bikes, etc. What's the deal? At this point I've long given up on trying to figure out how the rules and enforcement work. A colleague of mine commuts to and from work now in downtown SH with a plateless Changjiang 750 motorcycle and sidecar and he doesn't give a rat's ass about the cops.