Shanghai License Obtained

Today’s weather: High = 27 Low = 20
Cloudy

It finally looks like I’m good for drivers licenses until 2015 now! The conversion of the Suzhou drivers license to a Shanghai one was an unexpected piece of cake.

I basically just showed up there after school on the motorcycle. It took perhaps 15 minutes to get there as opposed to a long trip using bullet trains to Suzhou. How's that for irony. Bullet trains take a long time.

Another piece of irony is that I drove my unregistered motorcycle right up to the front door of the traffic police and vehicle management office in Shanghai. I justify this by my long-term goal to eventually get a legal motorcycle registration and legal plates. Don't think of it as unregistered, think of it as pre-registered.

The location was much more convenient than the Suzhou office -- the latter being isolated in the suburbs of course, where else would it be. Thankfully, the Shanghai office was in a semi-downtown area. Upon entering, I could tell at a glance that things were already less frantic and busy. This was a really good sign.

My initial plan was to show up and get information, but it turns out I would actually be walking out with a license in less than 45 minutes of walking in!

I explain the situation with wanting to convert a Suzhou license to a Shanghai one, and tried whatever Chinese I could to expain it. They got the idea, and the people at the counter were more than eager to help a foreigner who attempted to speak a mediocre bit of Chinese.

As an aside, I'll have to settle for intermediate fluency in the language as it's impossible to do full-time Chinese studying and full-time work at the same time. It's either work a stable job and stick with the level of Chinese that I have with gradual improvements, or else it's full-time study to achieve a more advanced level.

Anyways, since all my documents are already in order, as already needed from the previous trips, it was a simple matter of filling in a form, affixing photos, taking a number and waiting. Shortly after I got called up, the policeman asked a few quesitons, did a few more things on the computer to check that I actually live in Shanghai --- as proved from the authentic registration slip of residence. Then I pid a fee and picked up the license shortly after in an ORDERLY FASHION while they simply repeated the same number I had used at a former counter

Time in 3:30 Time out 4:15. Talk about efficient!

The best part is I now have a Shanghai drivers license that will last me another 5 years from now, and as indicated from the previous post, it is super useful as a secondary ID document for all kinds of purposes.

Recall from a few posts back that out of sheer frustration in dealing with the police office at my former residence in Jiangsu province, Suzhou prefecture, Wujiang sub-prefecture, and Luxu Town, they kept asking for more and more papers that I didn't have. At that time, out of sheer frustration, I "modified" a document using a computer and literal cutting and pasting to "prove" my recent Shanghai residence to the Jiangsu guys.

That trick worked in order to obtain a genuine residence registration document in Jiangsu province, and it led to a chain of events for actually replacing the lost license.

But I wasn't stupid enough to repeat the same trick twice and apply it at the Shanghai vehicle office.

Once that earlier forged document had achieved its purpose, I threw it in the trash can. Then I went down to the Shanghai local district police station with my secretary and obtained a genuine residence registration document. I also took the time to kindly explain to her without telling her directly that she should be following her own Chinese laws and go with foreign teachers to the police station to re-register every time we leave the Chinese mainland. She said it wasn't necessary, but the police officer said it was, and that was backed up with a rule in writing. So we straightened that matter out

With genuine resident registration document in hand, it was a piece of cake to get the genuine Shanghai license.

Phew! Well, this whole ordeal is over with now. Time to celebrate by treating a bunch of people to a dinner.