Successful Fuel Run

Today's weather: High = 25 Low = 18
Major haze

This was cross-posted from My China Moto (http://www.mychinamoto.com)

With all the recent discussion on the fuel restrictions for unregistered bikes in Shanghai and the ever-changing situations about this reality, it seems that the latest summary is follows. This would come from the English newspapers, Chinese papers, posts on this forum, word-of-mouth, and my own experiences:

-- Gas stations within the middle ring uniformly refuse a fuel-up with signs to back up the rule
-- Gas stations outside the middle ring sometimes refuse, sometimes not. Private gas stations are the best bet if you agree to purchase goods at the convenience store. The more prevalent SINOPEC stations tend to refuse most often.
-- Fake registration plates are selling briskly from the various scooter shops and associated "some dudes" for around 200-300 RMB. For the most part these will get you the fuel. Works all the time in the suburbs, not sure about downtown.

In another post, out of frustration I wrote something like, what does this mean now, if it keeps up like this will we need to start getting gas from other provinces? Seems like a lot of effort to go to just for fuel!

Out of curiosity, I wanted to find out the answer to that question today. So it made for a little fact-finding and fuel-finding adventure. That is, in a worst-case scenario, what would a fuel run to another province actually look like?

Using the scientific method to do this, my 'control variable' was an unregistered scooter from a local friend. This scooter looked like any of the other of the hundred in Shanghai that would face instant rejection at a gas station. Another thing was I wanted the shortest distance from my house in Xu Jia Hui to the nearest provincial border.

What I found out was rather remarkable actually. Using the BEI-QING highway (北青公路) north of Qingpu, it was only about 35km to the border on a very smooth wide road with hardly any traffic. Once across the standard two checkpoints for any provincial border, a SINOPEC gas station came up right away and I got a fuel-up without even a second glance. This particular checkpoint had a few people standing around, but no one took an interest in stopping me (unlike the other ones on the Huqingping). Farm vehicles and other traffic was going to and fro all the time.

Also, just for curiosity sake, I went looking for other backroads across the border. I managed to find no less than SIX distinct routes back and forth, with either old abandoned checkpoints or nothing at all. Eventually I gave it up and went back home as there were clearly many more routes available, but six was certainly enough to choose from.

It took about 45 minutes each way to do the fuel run, which wasn't too long, and it's nice to know that a guaranteed supply of fuel can be found!

Another surprise in all of this was the sheer number of unchecked routes back and forth from the border. It turns out that the Shanghai / Jiangsu border is a lot more porous than I realized. The exploring today was all in an area that I had explored very little two years ago. At time, my work used to be right along the border, but it was south of a large body of water known as Dianshan Lake. From there to downtown, it was over 60km. This time I explored all along the norther part of Dianshan Lake, with the provincial border being only 35km from downtown.

The only negative in all this is that for a scooter, it uses up maybe 1/4 of the tank to go back and forth like this. There are also the costs in time and money to make a long-distance fuel run like this. To me it's negligible, but maybe not for a local.

For a motorcycle than can hold 450-500 km worth of fuel, this could easily last more than a few weeks and make the run worthwhile. There would also be the option of filling up a large motorcycle tank and then siphoning it off to the downtown scooter riders for a profit -- which is no doubt already being done.